“the already liberated self is … in the fabric of their
awareness that they had simply not noticed”
Buddhists realize that the starting point for self-transformation is our worldview, which they call “right view” or “the view.”
“While belief per se tends not to be a central concern for Buddhists, how we see the world—what is sometimes known as ‘the view’—is. How we see the world determines how we will act within it.”[i]
Buddha taught that we must have “the correct view [and that it] is so important to go beyond conceptual understanding to the direct realization [insight] of the absolute, awakened state.”[ii]
In Simple Reality we believe that “through right view we arrive into the present moment, the NOW. We arrive at the place we never left and experience it for the first time.”[iii]
Insight # 2 comes to us from Ken Wilber (b. 1949), an American teacher and writer. He is often referred to as the “Einstein of consciousness studies.”
“What’s so interesting to me is that both top-down [right-view] and bottom up [a medication practice] have a role to play. That awakening event—when a person acknowledges that the already liberated self is something that is in the fabric of their awareness that they had simply not noticed—is profound transformation. But then the person comes out of that state. And, as you say, there’s the whole process of how much does it stick, can they align themselves with it.”[iv]
If one has a profound context or “right view” the transformation will “stick.”
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Additional Reading:
- Right View, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2
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[i] Boyce, Barry. “Mind, Matter or God.” Shambhala Sun. January 2008, p. 53.
[ii] Rinpoche, Dzogchen Ponlop. “What the Buddha Taught.” Shambhala Sun. Boulder, Colorado, May 2006, p. 103.
[iii] Henry, Roy Charles. “Right View.” The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2, 2018, p. 181.
[iv] Cohen, Andrew and Ken Wilber. “The Guru and the Pandit, Conflict, Creativity and the Nature of God: Dialog VI.” What is Enlightenment? Lennox, Massachusetts, August-October 2004, p. 48.
