The Magic 8-fold Path: Right View

Part 1.a: Hold it lightly, k?

This is a series exploring Buddhism’s foundational and well-loved frameworks. Like flat, stark bangs being teased into full, sexy three-dimension by the right amount of Aquanet and the perfect comb, I will attend to these ideas with TLC and some razzle dazzle. If you’ve been curious about Buddhism or yourself in relation to the world, or if you need any kind of buoy at this time, this is for you.

We start with the Eightfold Path.

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Hello friends,

We are living in a time of great delusion. Layers of assumptions and projections and judgments heaped onto us, smothered with even more delusions. Our President is a President of catastrophic delusion, and that is just radiating out into everything we read, see, and hear. Two “genders.” No abortions. But also no industry regulation. No justice and no peace.

If you consider delusion to be a substance we ingest, which we take in at every turn - texts, memes, algorithm, TV, movies, echoed from well-meaning friends and family, and simply hanging around in the air we breathe… then please take very good care of yourself these days. Stay well-hydrated and rest as much as you can. The Delusion Quality Index is worse than the toxic air at an active burn site.

Right View is the first step on the Eightfold Path and the the step that you really cannot skip. Well, you cannot “skip” any of them, obviously, if you’re going for the enlightened thing, but it’s the step that enables all the rest. It’s the foundation and the grandmother.

Right view is a vast and spacious grounding for an ethical and liberated life. Right view is having a firm grasp on the true nature of ultimate reality, which is to have no firm grasp at all. It’s seeing things as they are, which is not any particular way at all. This is a very hard part.

Here’s a view that’s been circulating widely the past few weeks:

This joke works because it reflects a truth felt by many, and yet deep down we know the pretense is impossible. Haha, this sucks. This is funny because we’re in charge of so much (or so we believe) that we would also like to be in charge of our life itself and even our subscription to it. But there are no returns in life.

Sure, you can quit a job or end a marriage, leave a place, or in some ways undo something harmful you’ve done or said with the right words or actions. But you can never take back those things that happened. Things burned can never be unburned. Things born can never be unborn. What has lived and died will always have lived and then died.

You have other choices and avenues for agency, but undoing life is not one of them. Life is exactly this: decimation and grief against a palate of freshness and hope. Life is a lot of other things too, all at once, which means life is actually not exactly anything. It just is. How do you wrap your mind around something that can’t be wrapped up?

Explode your mind wide open. That’s approaching right view.

Right view is revealed through sobriety from essentialism, an unlatching from judgments, and the dissipation of the projections and harmful beliefs that are giving way to unethical actions.

As we are starting to see, at its core (or non-core), right view is about release or holding it all lightly / not at all. This is far and away the most difficult thing for me personally, because I love to hold things tightly. Regretfully, I have even, at times, been well-known for it.

It feels good, natural, even, to grip my grimy paws around a situation and with earnest hubris say, “for sure this thing / person / interaction is THIS.” Then I can feel right or justified, or at peace, and scurry along my merry way. Not to give myself no credit, but this is a very challenging practice for me — to drop the story. Gripping things tightly is a comfortable thing to do because, at least initially, it appears to help us make sense of the world and find safety. This is that and that is this. Great, got it. Everything in its right place.

And oftentimes our story about what happened or what IS is so good! It’s compelling, it’s data-driven, it’s riveting. Netflix would be lucky to own the rights. And even while I do understand that are there two sides to a story, I also know there are probably a hundred and twenty. But in actuality, there are no sides at all. Damn — what have I been using my energy on?!

The study of Buddhism is a great way to be reminded that whatever you find to be extremely important and valuable, or certain, most likely, ultimately, is not at all. And that truth always hits you like a huge splat of bird poop on the head. So sudden that it’s not just horrifying but hilarious too. And deep down you’re like, “yeah, that does track…”

That’s why getting free is a practice. You gotta come back to it again and again.