[HonjUopu]

you speak of right view - can you describe this - is it peaceful clarity or do you also find answers to your own questions through the process - innate wisdom?

Right View is a core aspect to understand the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path. Both teachings are not realy separate if you understand the first, the second is understood. If you take over the second, the first is realized. Even when this teachings are taught as "steps", there are no such steps. Meditation helps to the development of Right View... The Noble Livelihood brings you Right View or in some other way, The Noble Viwe brings you a Right Livelihood, a Noble Mindfulness, Concentration and Wisdom.

Mindfulness and concetration are given by Zazen that in some way is like both, Vipasana and Samatha.

To understand Right View I take the statemente made by Stuka here:

He [the buddha] taught that we tend to grasp at sense experience and fashion self-view to accord with that sense experience, and act according to that self view. He further taught that self-view is a house of cards, that we cling to experience and self-view and expect the world to conform to that view, and experience misery when the world does not conform. This is the effect of ignorance (not knowing, not seeing) on our perception of the world. Ignorance of what? That sense experience is impermanent, not "me" or "mine", and can bring suffering when we grasp it as "me" or "mine".

So in this case, Right View is to "see" things, people, ideas, events... with out the veil of Ignorance. We "ignore" that clinging and running away are at the root of suffering.

As stuka told, paticcasamuppada or Dependent Origination complements or brings the understanding of the process that is to be understood so to develop Righ View.

Now, silent learning has a lot to do with this:

first through understanding, and, more gradually, through integrating this new understanding into our mental habits

In Zen we devote very little to intelectual understanding and we go directly to the integration process through a very strict and intense practice of zazen that gives us the strenght (Gyoji) for develping this particular Zen attitude toward practice.

Namaste dear Blueseasparkling,