Question

Can you please talk about Wrong View, and give an example?

Answer

An example of Wrong View would be thinking that there's no Law of Kamma. Thinking that we can do anything we want and we're not responsible for the result. Another classic wrong view from in the Buddha's day, is that we do not owe our mother and father anything, there's nothing to owe them. Another wrong view, was that there was no possibility to get enlightened. These are some classic wrong views from the scriptures.

Wrong views that we have today? Look around you, one of the biggest is that "Money brings happiness" - guaranteed to bring happiness. Each one of us knows that money is not guaranteed to bring happiness, and in fact, it often brings pain for many people. Wrong view will also say that my happiness is always dependent on someone else".

So all these sort of thoughts are related to, in a sense, the Four Noble Truths. If it's a view that's opposite to the Four Noble Truths, then it's a wrong view.

"Dukkha exists" - that's the 1st Noble Truth - it just does. There's nothing we can do about it. Nothing we can change. It's one of the rules of life. It's there. Unsatisfactoriness is part of our life. Most of it comes from us.

Buddhism goes farther than that, and although it says every bit of our own Dukkha comes from us, that incorporates past lives as well. The mental Dukkha we can change. Physical Dukkha we can't always change. People coming, people going, having a broken arm, whatever - that sort of stuff, the outside stuff - we can't always see the causes for that, but the anger, the fear, the grief, all that is something we're making right here in the present moment. That's the Dukkha we're creating. That's the Dukkha that we can also stop. By looking to the 3rd Noble Truth, if we develop enough wisdom, we will not get afraid, we will not be angry, we will not be greedy. So by developing wisdom we can end our Dukkha.

The 4th Noble Truth - all the methods, all the techniques - called the Noble Eightfold Path, it's every bit of how the Buddha taught us to train the mind; train the speech; train the actions as well.

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