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Right view is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain the noble path on which the superfluous is exhausted. 正見是法明門、得漏盡聖道故. We’re moving into a section now on the elements of the eightfold path as factors of awakening. In its broadest sense, right view is anything that results in wholesome skillful activity that moves you toward letting go of the three poisons and experiencing awakening, as opposed to mistaken views that lead to suffering for yourself and others. More specifically, traditionally right view is a deep understanding of what Buddha taught about things like these.
Okumura Roshi has this summary of the eightfold path: The fourth noble truth, the way to eradicate the causes of suffering, is the eightfold noble path. To follow this path we must view things correctly, base our thinking on reality instead of egocentricity, speak truthfully, act in accord with the right view, engage in a wholesome livelihood, make diligent efforts, and practice right mindfulness and meditation. The Buddha gave us these eight guidelines for our practice. . . . This teaching and the practice of the Middle Way to which the Buddha awakened are the shelter and foundation of our life. (1) The eightfold path is what Buddha talked about in his first sermon. It’s often depicted as a wheel, without beginning or end and illustrating that all the elements are really arising together. Yet we also say that the first element of the path is right view. Well, we need a certain amount of right view in order to get started in practice. Right view is the first element of the eightfold path because all the rest of those activities have right view as the foundation. The gate statement says that with right view we attain the noble path. It makes sense that we’re going to have difficulty with the rest of the path if we don’t have some insight and experience with the four noble truths. After all, the fourth truth is the eightfold path, which includes right view. Right view is really important in experiencing awakening and liberating beings, but it’s not enough by itself. It’s only one of the eight elements of the eightfold path. Right view is supported by all the others and supports them too. Right view is what helps us understand what our practice is and what to do. It’s where our attitudes, values and worldview start, and that’s how we determine what we say, what we do, and whether those are skillful and wholesome or not. Right view shapes how we see the world and how we see ourselves as part of that world. Holding right view and seeing reality clearly leads to one set of actions, and holding mistaken views that are covered over by delusion leads to another. Those actions have consequences and lead to a further unfolding of karma. Buddha says that no single factor is so responsible for the arising of unwholesome states of mind and the suffering of beings as wrong view, and no factor so helpful for the arising of wholesome states of mind and promoting wellbeing as right view. Thus right view helps us get started on the path, but we don’t leave it behind as we continue to practice. Our understanding of right view itself deepens and becomes more subtle as we live and practice, so the wheel keeps turning—there isn’t a beginning or an end. The eightfold path is divided into three sections: prajna (wisdom), sila (ethics) and samadi (for us, zazen.) Right view falls into the first section on wisdom. There are two kinds of knowledge connected with right view. One is conceptual: intellectually, we can understand what Buddha taught relatively easily; we understand what the words mean. We engage in some dharma study and read what teachers and ancestors and other practitioners have said about the dharma because in the beginning we don’t have personal experience of the way Buddha sees. Then we do some discernment and reflection on what we’ve heard or read and how it shows up in our own experience. This isn’t dry, academic understanding or just memorization; it’s rooted in bodhicitta and an aspiration to practice. There’s an element of faith involved that motivates us to establish a practice. The other kind of knowledge connected with right view is experiential. This is the knowledge we have when we directly experience for ourselves what Buddha is pointing out. The activities of the eightfold path are aimed at moving us from our base of conceptual right view toward experiential right view. Bhikku Nanamoli, who was a translator of the Pali Canon into English, says: 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. I mentioned that one important aspect of right view is seeing cause and effect, how one thing arises from another and nothing comes into being independent of anything else. That pattern shows up in the four noble truths. Craving and aversion lead to suffering, and abandoning craving and aversion leads to a lessening of suffering. It also appears in the twelvefold chain of causation: craving leads to clinging, to feeling, to sense contact, to perception, and so on. The basic teaching is that when this is, that is; when this is not, that is not. Things give rise to other things, and if those causes aren’t there, then the resulting thing doesn’t arise. Seeing conditionality is the foundation of right view. We can look closely at each thing that arises to learn about it, and we can tell pretty quickly that it’s not actually disconnected from everything else. It’s not actually independent, and this is what the Buddha saw under the bodhi tree. He worked backwards from the elements of suffering. Where we’ve encountered right view in a couple of previous gates, it’s been with regard to discussions about compassion. Tight view naturally leads to compassion because we see both how suffering arises in beings and that we’re not disconnected and independent from them or from the rest of the planet. Along with compassion, of course comes a less self-centered worldview. We’re a bit better able to see how we’re driven by the three poisons to cling to self. Okumura Roshi says: I think our way of viewing things is upside down. We think we are the most important within this world; that this world is our possession. But, actually, we are a very small part of nature. What we should do is to turn it over and see the right position of ourselves in nature. This is what Buddha taught as right view in the Eightfold Noble Path. This is the way we can live together with all beings. Again, right view shapes our experience of the world and how we fit into it, which is really basic and foundational. Right view of self is as empty, impermanent and ungraspable, and also as one completely interconnected node in the network rather than the thing at the top of the pyramid. Thus centralizing or clinging to right view is a mistake. Clinging to any view is a mistake, because views change all the time, even views about the dharma and our practice. We’ve not yet talked about the second half of the gate statement, which describes the eightfold path as a place where we drop the need for adding extra stuff to our experience of this moment. There are two ways to think about this connection between right view and what’s extra. One is that if we really get what Buddha is saying, we can see that we don’t need to go looking for things, people or sensations to make us happy and remove our suffering. Those things are beside the point when it’s the desire itself that’s creating our suffering. We also don’t need to run around trying out various spiritual practices looking for the one that’s going to save us from ourselves. All we have to do is deeply investigate the four noble truths and take up the eightfold path. Ironically, clinging to an idea about the four noble truths is also extra. It isn’t the same as the actual, alive unfolding of the four noble truths in this moment here and now. If I try to catch what reality is in this moment and pin it down, I take the freshness and the life out of it because impermanent, dynamic reality has already moved on and left me behind. My view is already obsolete and superfluous. Okumura Roshi tells the story of visiting Japanese friends in the US and looking at the atlas their kids were using. He was surprised that US was shown as the center of the world, and he realized that it’s always true that wherever we are, our view is that this is the center of the world, even though earth is round and there’s no center, corners or edges. Since we all have this view, we can see how easy it is to step on each other and forget that we actually live in a network of interdependent origination. To us, the map always looks like this place is the biggest and most important place. Okumura Roshi says: Because an atlas or a map is flat, it has only two dimensions, so something is always distorted. . . . The world created by thought is the same. The shape, size, or directions are not like the real thing. Our view is distorted by our egocentricity. If we think the map is real and accurate, we make a mistake. Our own view is an incomplete copy of the world we experience. If we grasp our view as the absolutely right view, we make a mistake. We cannot live harmoniously with others whose maps of the world are created by their own karma or conditioned experiences. When we study how an atlas is made and how it is distorted, it becomes a useful tool for understanding reality. We study how our views are formed. Then we can try to correct the distortion. Our idea of the world might not actually be the same as the world, and our idea of right view might not actually be same as right view. In the end, we even have to put aside idea about what right view is and go beyond distinctions between right view and mistaken or deluded view. Holding a fixed idea about the world is one of those superfluous things from the gate statement, and so is holding a fixed idea about right view. Dogen tells a story in the Tenzo Kyokun: Xuefeng Yicun was once the tenzo under Dongshan Liangjie. One day while Xuefeng was washing the rice Dongshan happened to pass by and asked, “Do you wash the sand and pick out the rice, or wash the rice and pick out the sand?” I wash and throw away both the sand and the rice together,” Xuifeng replied. (2) Rice and sand mean right views and mistaken views, or delusion. Rice of course is the valuable thing—it’s edible as nice food. Sand is an impurity—it’s not edible and doesn’t feel good on the teeth. Cleaning rice is an everyday activity in the training temple; sometimes a small group of us would sit around picking bugs and pebbles and sand out of the rice before we cooked it. Dongshan is asking Xuefeng: In your everyday activities, do you sift through your mistaken views and look for right views to keep and cultivate, or do you look through your awakened views for delusion and try to get rid of them? Xuefeng says that without negating the existance of either mistaken view or right view, he goes beyond the distinction. He throws out ideas of both right view and mistaken view. Anything we add to the direct experience of this reality is extra. If we watch ourselves carefully, we might see that we often want to add something else to a situation in hopes of making it “better”--this would all be OK if only . . . What we usually mean is this would all be OK for me if only . . . Thus in order to make it OK for me, I choose to see only these elements of the situations, or only these characteristics of mine or someone else, or I write a story about how I wish things were so I can ignore how they really are. It’s ironic that ignoring stuff is actually extra. Ignoring stuff is an activity; it takes energy and creates karma because it’s an action. Actively ignoring stuff is not the same as letting go of thought. Ignoring stuff means engaging with it. Letting go of stuff means to stop engaging with it. Usually ignoring stuff is about protecting the five skandhas that we consider “me.” If we have right view and really understand what Buddha was saying about suffering and the nature of self, then we don’t have to protect the five skandhas and we can see that doing it is superfluous. Traditionally, religious speculation is also considered superfluous. When people asked the Buddha about things like whether there was life after death and how the universe began, he said he knew the answers, but didn’t talk about those things. He only taught about suffering and how to deal with it, and considered all that kind of speculation to be extra. Wondering about someone else’s level of attainment or insight and how they got there is also extra. Buddha said we should just put all that aside and do our best to get to our own clarity. Put your effort into seeing as clearly as you can for yourself and having your own pure, direct experience of reality. Don’t worry about what others are doing, or speculate about what’s going on somewhere else or what’s going to happen in the future. You can’t take action on any of that. The only thing we have is this reality, this body and mind, and this moment in which we can practice. Anything else is extra. Finally, let’s look at another of Dogen’s writings, his comment on right view from his fascicle on the 37 factors of awakening: “Right view as a branch of the path” is the inside of the eyes containing the body. At the same time, even prior to the body we must have the eye that is prior to the body. Though the view has been grandly realized in the past, it is realized now as the real universe and is experienced immediately. In sum, those who do not put the body into the eyes are not Buddhist patriarchs. (3) “The eye that precedes the body” is like “the eye that precedes the moment,” which we considered a couple of gates ago. Again, it’s being aware of the space before our habituated thinking kicks in and decides whether sensations are good or bad, and before we take some physical action with the body in response. We might call it intuition in the sense that we’re aware of something without using our conscious, intellectual reasoning. This is not magic or a supernatural power; it’s simply being very self-aware and knowing well how we give rise to all the links in the twelvefold chain of causation and the suffering in the four noble truths. Dogen is reminding us that inside and outside, body and mind, subject and object are not separate from the beginning. Earlier I mentioned Bhikku Nanamoli’s image of the shift from the hand grasping at things to the eye of wisdom that sees through the three poisons and experiences Buddha’s teachings directly. The eye that precedes the body doesn’t negate the body. It goes beyond the distinction between eye and body without negating either one. That’s how right view goes from being a conceptual exercise to direct immediate experience. Right view isn’t passive, like looking at the world through a window or on a screen. It’s not just watching things go by or thinking about the dharma without getting involved. That would be setting up separation of subject and object. Those who do not put the body into the eyes are not Buddhist patriarchs. Those who aren’t manifesting wisdom, compassion, Buddha nature and right view with both body and mind aren’t completely practicing—practice is something we do. You may have heard previously about the five elements of spiritual health; one of them is knowing what we believe and why. We don’t usually stop to ask ourselves what we believe and where that belief came from, what shaped the worldview we’re carrying around and how that’s reflected in what we think, say and do. Our views are usually transparent to us and we think everyone else’s view is the same. This gate is asking us to do that investigation:
Why do we have the views we have, and are we operating from Right View, with an understanding of the way Buddha sees reality, or from mistaken views that lead us to take unwholesome action based on our delusion? What are we carrying around in our hearts and minds that’s superfluous? Notes: (1) Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 69-70 (2) Uchiyama, K. (2005). How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. United States: Shambhala, p. 5 (3) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 13. Questions for reflection and discussion:
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About the text The Ippyakuhachi Homyomon, or 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination, appears as the 11th fascicle of the 12 fascicle version of Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo. Dogen didn't compile the list himself; it's mostly a long quote from another text called the Sutra of Collected Past Deeds of the Buddha. Dogen wrote a final paragraph recommending that we investigate these gates thoroughly. Hoko has been talking about the gates one by one since 2016. She provides material here that can be used by weekly dharma discussion groups as well as for individual study. The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination
[1] Right belief [2] Pure mind [3] Delight [4] Love and cheerfulness The three forms of behavior [5] Right conduct of the actions of the body [6] Pure conduct of the actions of the mouth [7] Pure conduct of the actions of the mind The six kinds of mindfulness [8] Mindfulness of Buddha [9] Mindfulness of Dharma [10] Mindfulness of Sangha [11] Mindfulness of generosity [12] Mindfulness of precepts [13] Mindfulness of the heavens The four Brahmaviharas [14] Benevolence [15] Compassion [16] Joy [17] Abandonment The four dharma seals [18] Reflection on inconstancy [19] Reflection on suffering [20] Reflection on there being no self [21] Reflection on stillness [22] Repentance [23] Humility [24] Veracity [25] Truth [26] Dharma conduct [27] The Three Devotions [28] Recognition of kindness [29] Repayment of kindness [30] No self-deception [31] To work for living beings [32] To work for the Dharma [33] Awareness of time [34] Inhibition of self-conceit [35] The nonarising of ill-will [36] Being without hindrances [37] Belief and understanding [38] Reflection on impurity [39] Not to quarrel [40] Not being foolish [41] Enjoyment of the meaning of the Dharma [42] Love of Dharma illumination [43] Pursuit of abundant knowledge [44] Right means [45] Knowledge of names and forms [46] The view to expiate causes [47] The mind without enmity and intimacy [48] Hidden expedient means [49] Equality of all elements [50] The sense organs [51] Realization of nonappearance The elements of bodhi: The four abodes of mindfulness [52] The body as an abode of mindfulness [53] Feeling as an abode of mindfulness [54] Mind as an abode of mindfulness [55] The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness [56] The four right exertions [57] The four bases of mystical power The five faculties [58] The faculty of belief [59] The faculty of effort [60] The faculty of mindfulness [61] The faculty of balance [62] The faculty of wisdom The five powers [63] The power of belief [64] The power of effort [65] The power of mindfulness [66] The power of balance [67] The power of wisdom [68] Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth [69] Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth [70] Effort, as a part of the state of truth [71] Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth [72] Entrustment as a part of the state of truth [73] The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth [74] Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth The Eightfold Path [75] Right view [76] Right discrimination [77] Right speech [78] Right action [79] Right livelihood [80] Right practice [81] Right mindfulness [82] Right balanced state [83] The bodhi-mind [84] Reliance [85] Right belief [86] Development The six paramitas [87] The dāna pāramitā [88] The precepts pāramitā [89] The forbearance pāramitā. [90] The diligence pāramitā [91] The dhyāna pāramitā [92] The wisdom pāramitā [93] Expedient means [94] The four elements of sociability [95] To teach and guide living beings [96] Acceptance of the right Dharma [97] Accretion of happiness [98] The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna [99] Stillness [100] The wisdom view [101] Entry into the state of unrestricted speech [102] Entry into all conduct [103] Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī [104] Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech [105] Endurance of obedient following [106] Attainment of realization of the Dharma of nonappearance [107] The state beyond regressing and straying [108] The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state and, somehow, one more: [109] The state in which water is sprinkled on the head Archives
May 2025
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