Bhante Gunaratana calls Right View skillful understanding. On the wheel of the Eightfold Path, Right View and Right Intention comprise the section devoted to wisdom. In wisdom, we apply a skillful understanding of ourselves and the world.

Gunaratana explains that this is why ignorance includes both not knowing and wrong knowing. First, let’s talk about not knowing. Of course, in enlightenment terms, we say that this kind of ignorance is a form of sleep. We are not awake. When we wake up, ignorance is dispelled.

The ignorance of not knowing also relates to the idea of samsara, or mindless wandering. It’s mindless because we are asleep, and it’s wandering because we have no sense of home and no sense of destination, either. Ignorance makes us live as sleepwalkers in our own life. Samsara has also been described as conditioned existence, where we live unaware of the habitual patterns that govern our lives. We just let them run the show, day after day, with little thought or interference. We exist on autopilot, and not in a way that will deliver us anywhere interesting or meaningful.

The other aspect of ignorance is wrong knowing. Think of this in terms of stubbornness, or rigidity. When we are SO CERTAIN we’re right, we close ourselves off to other possible ways of seeing. And when we do that, we run the dangerous risk of seeing something incompletely, or entirely wrong. Because there’s no sense of center in ignorance, we can’t possibly be seeing through the eyes of wisdom. We just see through the eyes we have chosen for ourselves. And unfortunately, a lot of times we choose poorly.

This is why Right View is the first step on the Eightfold Path. It does us no good to walk the path if we aren’t seeing it with skillful understanding. And this is also why meditation is central to the practice of cultivating Right View. When we meditate regularly, we open our minds. We recognize patterns that may not be serving us. Sometimes we realize how and where our emotions or reactions lead us astray. Meditation clears the haze off our eyes. We learn to see with skillful understanding what’s really happening.

We awake.

Gunaratana says we arrive at skillful understanding when we achieve a sense of realistic perception. We stop running away from what’s unpleasant. We look clearly at suffering. We recognize our own patterns and even a few of our own blind spots, if we’re lucky. And we become wise enough to know that all of this unpleasantness and suffering is impermanent. We can just let it go, and keep moving. So we move skillfully, with intention.

This week, can you make it a habit as you go about your day to ask yourself how you’re seeing something? Ask yourself whether there is another way to understand. Be open to receiving the gift of uncovering where your understanding may be unskilled and unhelpful. And maybe give five minutes of daily meditation a try!

This post is part of a series on the Eightfold Path. Read all my posts on Right View here.