Recently, I had been having a Line conversation with a Dharma Friend. She asked for some practice advice and I kept emphasizing to her how critical it is to identify our wrong views. This is, after all the heart of practice, but it is also something I see my friend struggle to do time and again. I get the struggle, frankly, its easy to get caught up just analyzing a story or a situation, while missing the wrong view.  I decided to follow my own advice and to test myself. Could I go back to an old story of my own and identify the wrong  view.. This is the story that came to mind:

Years ago, I was getting ready to leave KPY and Mae Yo was standing nearby. She came over to my dustyass car and began to dust it off. She wouldn’t let me go till she had finished. I felt sheepish standing there with my teacher cleaning my car for me. As I drove down the mountain it became clear to me why she did it — the glare was strong and if there had been dust it would have been hard to see. It would have been dangerous.

It would be easy to say I was being lazy. Laziness is dangerous. Don’t be lazy, case closed . But that misses the nuances and it misses an opportunity to really see how my mind/heart ticks.

The truth is, I am not lazy — I regularly work hard at shit: My practice, Thai, fitness, beauty, health. I work hard on things that I view as important. I saw the dirt on my own car, I didn’t clean it because I didn’t view it as important, I thought it was trivial. Even seeing my teacher do it, I still thought she was doing something trivial, a kindness, I didn’t understand the importance (that there is proof of how damn deep the wrong view runs).

To be explicit here: The wrong view is that what is important in the world is what I judge as important. What is outside of my beliefs, values or concerns is trivial. There is an implicit permanence that my limited view/understanding/beliefs and preferences are universal, that there is a law to the universe, and it is the law of Alana.

So lets challenge that view: Am I the arbiter of all things important? Do only the actions/rupa I assign meaning to have value? Do only the actions/rupa I assign meaning to have consequence? At the bottom of my action is a deeply skewed vision of the world: I believe the world revolves around me. That what I think is important IS important, to the exclusion of everything else. That if I can’t envision or imagine a particular effect then I am immune from it, like a get out of jail free card for not knowing the law. But is that the way the law works –exempt in ignorance?

From here it is easy to consider the Ttuktokpie starting with the very real situational example of getting in an accident. But it also is easy to consider all the places my core belief that I am the arbiter of importance in this world screw me in my daily life (hint hint the belief my priorities are more important that other peoples’ is the basis for every fight/disagreement and every self entitled, judgmental and cunty behavior and the antecedent consequences). And the super scary perils, like hell births, that come from views like this. Seeing the specific behaviors of course give me the opportunity to change them.

Ultimately though, when I talk about changing a behavior, my real goal is minimizing the stresses of living in this world. It is important, but no matter how good I get at living in this world, I am still in this world. Ideally, practice leads you out of this world. That there is why it is so critical for me to understand, deeper and deeper, my views. To evaluate them and truth test them . Those views are the reason I get born. The views are the reason I act. They are the reason I reap consequences and the reason I suffer with the experience consequences I don’t like.

This is a very very very long way to stress this most critical of point: everything boils down to view. It is why it is the first of the 8 fold path, everything else follows. Id one can fix their views the rest will follow naturally without effort. It is a prime cause.