Importance of Right View

Whilst meditation is a central practice in Buddhism, it doesn’t tend to work without what Buddhist’s call “Right View”. This is the first step on Buddha’s 8-fold path, and for good reason too - it teaches the spiritual aspirant the purpose of the teachings, how the teachings work and how the spiritual techniques are to be utilised to reach the goal of cessation of suffering. This gives the seeker the intellectual framework within which the teachings work. Once the teachings have done their job, the framework can then be thrown away (see How the teachings work).

“Knowledge without practice is like dying of thirst on the shore of a lake and that meditation without correct view is like a blind person going astray in the desert” Gendun Rinpoche

Buddhists from all the major schools of Buddhism agree with this. Above is a quote from the Tibetan Lama, Gedun Rinpoche. Here is a quote from Ajahn Passano talking about his teacher Ajahn Chah who was widely reputed to be enlightened -they are from the Theravada tradition:

“These two qualities, virtue and Right View, are what Ajahn Chah used to emphasise over and over and over again. These are what we need for laying the foundations for practice. You might ask, ‘Well, why didn’t he talk about meditation?’ Well, he did. But if we don’t get those foundations of virtue and Right View, then our meditation is not efficacious.”

Here’s what Bhikku Bodhi says in his introduction to the Sammaditthi Sutta (which discusses Right View in detail):

“Though the practice of right mindfulness has rightly been extolled as the crest jewel of the Buddha’s teaching, it cannot be stressed strongly enough that the practice of mindfulness, or any other approach to meditation, only becomes an effective instrument of liberation to the extent that it is founded upon and guided by right view. Hence, to confirm the importance of right view, the Buddha places it at the very beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path. Elsewhere in the Suttas the Buddha calls right view the forerunner of the path (pubbangama), which gives direction and efficacy to the other seven path factors.”

Bhikku Bodhi then goes on to explain 2 types of right view, namely conceptual right view and experiential right view:

“Right view, as explained in the commentary to the Sammaditthi Sutta, has a variety of aspects, but it might best be considered as twofold: conceptual right view, which is the intellectual grasp of the principles enunciated in the Buddha’s teaching, and experiential right view, which is the wisdom that arises by direct penetration of the teaching.”

“Conceptual right view, also called the right view in conformity with the truths (saccanulomika-sammaditthi), is a correct conceptual understanding of the Dhamma arrived at by study of the Buddha’s teachings and deep examination of their meaning. Such understanding, though conceptual rather than experiential, is not dry and sterile. When rooted in faith in the Triple Gem and driven by a keen aspiration to realize the truth embedded in the formulated principles of the Dhamma, it serves as a critical phase in the development of wisdom (pañña), for it provides the germ out of which experiential right view gradually evolves.”

“Experiential right view is the penetration of the truth of the teaching in one’s own immediate experience. Thus it is also called right view that penetrates the truths(saccapativedha-sammaditthi). This type of right view is aroused by the practice of insight meditation guided by a correct conceptual understanding of the Dhamma. To arrive at direct penetration, one must begin with a correct conceptual grasp of the teaching and transform that grasp from intellectual comprehension to direct perception by cultivating the threefold training in morality, concentration and wisdom. If conceptual right view can be compared to a hand, a hand that grasps the truth by way of concepts, then experiential right view can be compared to an eye — the eye of wisdom that sees directly into the true nature of existence ordinarily hidden from us by our greed, aversion and delusion.”