ON RIGHT VIEW AND STEPPING BACK

ON RIGHT VIEW AND STEPPING BACK

“It’s...important that you use right view in learning how to step back from your state of mind and evaluate it. To begin with, right view allows you to see where your thinking has gone off course. And second, it allows you to realize that you don't have to be immersed in a mood. One of the basic principles of right view is the principle of kamma, and one of the principles of kamma is that we have freedom of choice in the present moment. Yet this is an area where the wrong views of our culture get in the way.

~

We tend to think that our moods are our real self. We tend not to trust our thoughts because we know we've picked up a lot of ideas from the media and other people around us, but our moods and emotions seem to be genuinely ours, who we are in the present moment. This is where the Buddha's teachings on understanding yourself are important. You don't have to identify with your mood. There is always a spot in the mind that's just simply aware of these things. And you want to learn how to stand in that spot.

~

Again, the meditation is helpful in this regard because it teaches you to create a state of mind and then step back and look at it. As in Ajaan Lee's analogy of learning how to make baskets: You make a basket, then you step back and look at it. Is it too long? Too short? Is the weaving coarse and irregular? See what's not right and then bring that observation along when you make another basket, and then another one. If you can learn to look at your moods as baskets — i.e., not who you really are, but simply things you've created — then you can start working on the raw materials and make better ones. But it's important that you have this ability to step back...”

❁❁❁

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Excerpt from “How to Be Alone”

~

You can read the full talk here:

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/meditations4.html#alone