Day 1 Part 3 Mundane right view

Right view is the guide for the entire path. When asked what is more important, the Buddha said understanding Kamma is more important than understanding “emptiness.” Sila or moral conduct is very, very, central to the Buddhist path. Bhikkhu Bodhi: “The importance of right view can be gauged from the fact that our perspectives on crucial issues of reality and value have a bearing that goes beyond mere theoretical convictions. They govern our attitude, our actions, our whole orientation towards existence.”

Mundane right view is the correct grasp of the law of Kamma, or the moral efficacy of action. “Right view of the ownership of action.” Kamma is volitional action. Kamma is essentially a mental event, a factor in the mind which seeks to drive ones dispositions and purposes. 

Volition comes into being through the three doors of action: mental, verbal and bodily. It is not enough to know the general meaning of Kamma but to as the Sutta says: “When a noble disciple knows what is kammically unwholesome, and the root of wholesome Kamma, then he has right view.”

There is immeasurable wholesome and unwholesome Kamma but “the ten courses of wholesome and unwholesome kamma” stand out:

Bodily Action

 1. Destroying life

 2. Taking what is not given

 3. Wrong conduct in regard to sense pleasures

Verbal Action

4. False speech

5. Slanderous speech

6. Harsh speech

7. Idle chatter

Mental Action

8. Covetousness 

9. I’ll will

10. Wrong view

The ten courses of wholesome kamma are the opposite of these. kamma is wholesome or unwholesome depending on its root of greed, aversion or delusion. The three wholesome roots are their opposites (this will require a whole post in itself)

As far as the whole samsaric round of rebirths go, I am agnostic and leaning towards belief. If you believe in something, might as well make it beneficial in that I will be kinder to myself and others if I know the path is stretched out over lifetimes. Millions of Christians believe in the afterlife, what could be the harm of me believing in a cosmology of hell realm, hungry ghost realm, deva realm, etc... and the goal of the complete cessation of rebirth? As long as I am committed to reality and value science over pseudoscience, I don’t see the harm in a few crazy beliefs, especially because I’m someone of little importance, clout-wise.

Thanks to Bhikkhu Bodhi

Sadhu sadhu sadhu to my teachers

🙏