While the wise and compassionate teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha and many other inspiring Buddhist teachers describe the process of the path of practice, it’s only when we engage those teachings and the path becomes a lived process that its capacity to enliven and transform our lives comes into effect. When we live the teachings day by day, the path unfolds, guides and supports us to cultivate the conditions of liberation (according to early Buddhism) and awakening (according to later Buddhism). As we commit to meeting each situation and circumstance of our life with awareness, the profundity of the Four Noble Truths becomes evident and we discover their expression in our lives.   

Our deeply engrained mental and emotional habits that limit our freedom will become evident and we will learn how to practice with them through the skillfulness of the teachings of the Path. As we take to heart our feelings, states of mind and behaviors, and acknowledge them as who we are, we see them and “see through them.” That is, we see how powerfully they influence us, and that they’re just the product of habitual conditioned being.  

The path to liberation, the Noble Eightfold Path, has eight interrelated practices. Each of these practices is prefaced by samma, usually translated as “right” but perhaps could be more accurately translated as “appropriate,” as in appropriate to the conditions or context of the moment. The eight practices reveal their appropriateness as they are engaged in our lives. 

The first step on the Eightfold Path is Right View; the practice of being attentive to whatever we’re experiencing and the impact of that experience. Reflecting on both the experience and the impact helps to realize the samma of our practice. 

From the perspective of early Buddhism, we see the truth of the Four Noble Truths. In this approach we ask ourselves a series of questions:

• Do we feel any stress, discomfort, or suffering in how we’re relating to what’s happening or not happening?

• What is our contribution to this suffering?

• What are we clinging to that is contributing to the suffering?

Right View includes the encouraging perspective that clinging and its resulting suffering can be brought to an end. It also orients us to the practices of the entire Eightfold Path as the easiest and clearest path to liberation from suffering.

From the perspective of Zen, we see how awareness reveals and expresses awakening. We see and we see through the constructs and judgements our mind creates and in doing so, they become teachings. Implicit within the activities and expression of our life there are many perspectives that are relative to the context of the moment. Finding Right View in relation to them, is to discover how to practice with them as the path and how to stay true to the Path. 

From both perspectives, Right View and the Path are revealed through the experience of practicing with what arises not through preset ideas or goals. “When you find yourself where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.” (Dogen Zenji)

With Right View, we heal suffering, our own and others, we clarify and arouse the intention to practice and nurture the capacity to live in accord with the request of the other factors of the Eightfold Path. Those are: Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

These all in turn help to clarify and facilitate Right View, through which we discover the possibility of virtuous life that supports all life.