🟩 “Right View comes first”: SN 56.37, SN 56.44, dash of MN 117 (Week of April 11, 2021)

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mikenz66
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Re: “Right View comes first”: SN 56.37, SN 56.44, dash of MN 117 (Week of April 11, 2021)

Post by mikenz66 »

Regarding MN117, I recall that there are no other suttas that talk about a "mundane right view". Is that the case?

Obviously, what is referred to here as "mundane right view" is the opposite of many things that are declared to be impediments in other suttas, particularly "there are fruits and results of good and bad deeds".

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Re: “Right View comes first”: SN 56.37, SN 56.44, dash of MN 117 (Week of April 11, 2021)

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,
SDC wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 5:41 pm ...but the suttas do not seem to align with what this person was claiming. Perhaps he was conflating sammādiṭṭhi with samādhi?
No. It was usually in response to discussions on the particulars of Right View that he thought were superfluous, when one's practice is a "technique". Under such a scheme, Right View was relegated to a requisite burden rather than the forerunner in the execution of the technique. Apparently, teaching a "technique" from outside the Suttas rather than the teaching of Right View is what would actually give rise to wisdom. :shrug:

Rather, as Bhikkhu Bodhi explains...
In The Buddha's Words, p302 wrote:Contemporary Buddhist literature commonly conveys two ideas about pañña that have become almost axioms in the popular understanding of Buddhism, The first is that pañña is exclusively nonconceptual and nondiscursive, a type of cognition that defies all the laws of logical thought; the second, that pañña arises spontaneously, through an act of pure intuition as sudden and instantaneous as a brilliant flash of lightning. These two ideas about pañña are closely connected. If pañña defies all the laws of thought, it cannot be approached by any type of conceptual activity but can arise only when the rational, discriminative, conceptual activity of the mind has been stultified. And this stopping of conceptualization, somewhat like the demolition of a building, must be a rapid one, an undermining of thought not previously prepared for by any gradual maturation of understanding. Thus, in the popular understanding of Buddhism, pañña defies rationality and easily slides off into "crazy wisdom," an incomprehensible, mindboggling way of relating to the world that dances at the thin edge between super-rationality and madness.

Such ideas about pañña receive no support at all from the teachings of the Nikayas, which, are consistently sane, lucid, and sober, To take the two points in reverse order: First, far from arising spontaneously, pañña in the Nikayas is emphatically conditioned, arisen from an underlying matrix of causes and conditions. And second, pañña is not bare intuition, but a careful, discriminative understanding that at certain stages involves precise conceptual operations. Pañña is directed to specific domains of understanding. These domains, known in the Pali commentaries as "the soil of wisdom" (paññabhumi), must be thoroughIy investigated and mastered through conceptual understanding before direct, nonconceptual insight can effectively accomplish its work. To master them requires analysis, discrimination, and discernment. One must be able to abstract from the overwhelming mass of facts certain basic patterns fundamental to all experience and use these patterns as templates for close contemplation of one's own experience
Metta,
Paul. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
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Re: “Right View comes first”: SN 56.37, SN 56.44, dash of MN 117 (Week of April 11, 2021)

Post by DooDoot »

mikenz66 wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 11:53 pm Obviously, what is referred to here as "mundane right view" is the opposite of many things that are declared to be impediments in other suttas, particularly "there are fruits and results of good and bad deeds".
The suttas say in many places the Noble Path ends kamma. Therefore, it appears so clear "there are fruits and results of good and bad deeds" are not related to Nibbana.
mikenz66 wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 11:53 pmRegarding MN117, I recall that there are no other suttas that talk about a "mundane right view". Is that the case?
MN 117 does not use the word "mundane". It uses the words "with asava", "siding with merit" and "resulting in upadhi". It appears based on another topic today you are not very familiar with "upadhi". This said, MN 60, AN 10.211, etc, say the type of mundane right view in MN 117 only leads to "good kamma" & "heaven", which are not "supramundane". Even the independent Australia monk named Sujato has said there is nothing dhammically divergent in MN 117. :smile:
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