Righteous views are not the same as Right View
 

"Righteous views are not the same as Right View"

This was something that Ajahn Amaro said at a talk I went to recently and I thought it might make a good subject for discussion.

Any comments?

Spot on. It's just that the boundary gets blurred at times it seems.

Yes Aloka I recall a similar theme in a Sutta..

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipit....117.than.html
And what is right view? Right view, I tell you, is of two sorts:
There is right view with effluents [asava], siding with merit, resulting in the acquisitions [of becoming]; and there is Noble Right View, without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the Path.

"And what is the right view that has effluents, sides with merit, & results in acquisitions?
'There is what is given, what is offered, what is sacrificed. There are fruits & results of good & bad actions. There is this world & the next world. There is mother & father. There are spontaneously reborn beings; there are priests & contemplatives who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.'
This is the right view that has effluents, sides with merit, & results in acquisitions.

And what is the right view that is without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the Path?
The discernment, the faculty of discernment, the strength of discernment, analysis of qualities as a factor for Awakening, the path factor of right view of one developing the noble path whose mind is noble, whose mind is free from effluents, who is fully possessed of the Noble Path.
This is the right view that is without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the Path.

Yep. Righteous views beget self-righteous views, which beget self-righteous indignation, it seems. Getting all bent out of shape when someone fails to bow to your sacred cow. That sort of thing. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.gif

Sounds like an easy phrase to misinterpret or misuse for self-righteous finger-pointing. Anyone could demonize anyone else's values as "righteous view", actually. Perhaps some context would be helpful.

He was saying that we can develop negativity thinking others are wrong and 'should' do this or that - and that perfectionism can be a source of anger when the mind holds on to how it thinks things should be.

He also said that in the context of relating to other Buddhists we can set the standard too high and expect everyone to behave like arahants.

.

Yes, the "you're wrong because you aren't perfect" rhetorical trick tends to get a lot of mileage in debate among Buddhists. So does the "you are angry and self-righteous (and therefore wrong too) because you uphold the Buddha's teachings" trick.

It is a good tool for checking oneself. But then again, one could point to the Buddha's behavior in some cases andclaim that he has "righteous view"

Yes but didn't the Buddha pointed to the way things are, rather than about how he thought they should be ?

I would also assume that a highly advanced being could use appropriate but firm words which came from a relaxed mental state of clarity and emptiness rather than from the up-tight negativity I catch in myself sometimes, lol !

http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ies/flower.gif

He had a lot to say about how he thought things should be.

I guess I was thinking of statements like:

"Now this, monks, is the Noble Truth of dukkha: Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha.

Sn 56.11 .

Hi Aloka,

I think you are on to something here - an important distinction between what we know and how we act. I am not seeking to turn this into a discussion about semantics; righteous is very different to right and in the same way that someone can be a patron without being patronising.

Sure, but the Buddha advises many times "Thus you should train yourselves...". Just one example of many...

yes but is that the same as : "I don't like the way you are - you should be different?"

Of course not.

True, the word "should" is often enough attributed to the Buddha. The modal verb "should" has various uses, though. The context identifies its most likely intended use.

'If you want to attain Nibbana, you should train yourselves thusly' is instructional and tied in with Right View.

''There should be no suffering in the world" is a metaphysical moral proposition, and does not tie in with Right View. It seems more like a Righteous View to me. (Not that anyone has said the latter. Just an example.)

Of course, most people behave by some moral standard or other, and that's probably necessary for communities to exist. The danger lies in taking one's own moral code to be absolute and imposing it on others who may not want it. I think that's when it becomes Righteous or Self-righteous.

I think that there's a sense of "this is my advice, take it or leave it as you will" to what the Buddha taught. For me, that's a hard sense to maintain. When I see people mis-attributing words and concepts to the Buddha, I'm very tempted to shout them down sometimes. My tongue has deep teeth-marks. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.gif Those teeth-marks show that I'm still struggling with the tendency to impose my understanding on others, instead of understanding how paticcasamuppada applies to real life. That things are the way they are because of previous conditions, and it'd be foolish of me to expect them to be different. Thinking that way - whether it's absolutely true or not - results in a more kusala state and more kusala behavior, in my experience. Of course, I could be deluding myself. Can't rule that out.

For me it is a hindrance to my understanding when others communicate by asserting factual superiority at me - some teachers ( Buddhist and otherwise ) adopt this style and it is not consistent with the Buddha of the Pali canon as I experience it.

So, what? Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story...?

No

Buddha knew (knows) 'you are wrong because you haven't got the Right view'

or

'even if you got the Right View, you still have to perfect your mindfulness'

therefore

'you should train yourselves..'

I don't follow what you mean stuka, as always I am interested though.

A good story is not constituted of righteous views or having someone asserting factual superiority - the Buddha of the Pali canon and other Buddhist writings are not like this either ?????

Teaching and discussing what is accurate and what is not does not need to involve righteous views or assertions of factual superiority, especially given Buddhist understandings mean that accurate is not meant in an absolute sense.