The Right View as pertinent to the cessation of suffering

Among the Noble Eightfold Path which lead to a cessation of human suffering, I regard the Right View as a foundation of all the path.

The Right View is not about the right attitude as the name might suggest, but a total understanding and intrinsic ‘knowing’ of how the nature works. From the knowledge of the nature of existence which is itself a suffering, to the cause of the suffering, a possibility that a suffering can cease, and the way to that cessation of the suffering.

Without the Right View, a person shall lead his life, dwindling down into the abyss of greed, anger, and hatred. These will only intensify, blocking one from seeing what’s above the water.

I sense this after reading enough of dystopic and dark novels, and seeing the worst of human’s Wrong View. An obsession of those who have partaken in the Wrong View plunged one into a subterranean world where atrocity towards others and wrong-doing becomes a walk of life. In my view, a human has an obligation at birth, that is to bring oneself out of the primitive cave of instinct using one’s intelligence. This intelligence shall bring one to see the nature of things and be freed from the suffering. This is the raison d’être of our very existence.

On Immateriality of Things

Everything is immaterial. Body is not ours, so do material things like chairs and tables. These are just an incorporation of substances. Only our mind perceive them as materialistic and tangible.

The cause of human suffering is our inability to realise the immateriality of things. We feel distress because our mind perceive as such. We feel happy because, again, that’s our perception.

How to be free from suffering then? By realising, not intellectually, but intrinsically, that an existence is indeed unreal. If we are able to separate our mind from the body and look back, we shall see that perception is only a phenomenon. There is absolutely no need for us to feel it the way our bodily receptacles seem to tell us what to feel.

And that would stop our greed, as we no longer see its virtue. Greed just results in even more suffering, because that creates even more perception that those who’s unenlighten would struggle on.

But perhaps the greed of the helper would still have a place, because such kind greed helps other to be free from suffering.