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By Root 2422 0

a slightly abridged version of the Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta, the Discourse on Right View (MN 9), gives an excellent overview of the “soil of wisdom.” The Venerable Sāriputta, the Buddha’s disciple who excelled in wisdom, spoke the discourse to a group of his fellow monks. Since ancient times, the text has served as a primer of Buddhist studies in the monasteries of southern Asia. According to the classical commentary on this sutta, right view is twofold: conceptual right view, a clear intellectual grasp of the Dhamma; and experiential right view, the wisdom that directly penetrates the Dhamma. Conceptual right view, called “right view in conformity with the truths” (saccānulomika-sammādiṭṭhi), is a correct understanding of the Dhamma arrived at by studying and examining the Buddha’s teachings in depth. Such understanding, though conceptual rather than experiential, is by no means dry and sterile. When rooted in faith in the Buddha’s enlightenment and driven by a strong determination to realize the truth of the Dhamma, it serves as the germ from which experiential right view evolves and thus becomes a critical step in the growth of wisdom.

Experiential right view is the realization of the truth of the Dhamma—above all, of the Four Noble Truths—in one’s own immediate experience. For this reason it is called “right view that penetrates the truths” (saccapaṭivedha-sammādiṭṭhi). To arrive at direct penetration, one begins with correct conceptual understanding of the teaching and, by practice, transforms this understanding into direct perception. If conceptual right view is compared to a hand—a hand that grasps the truth with the aid of concepts—then experiential right view might be compared to an eye. It is the eye of wisdom, the vision of the Dhamma, that sees directly into the ultimate truth, hidden from us for so long by our greed, hatred, and delusion.

The Discourse on Right View is intended to elucidate the principles that should be comprehended by conceptual right view and penetrated by experiential right view. Sāriputta expounds these principles under sixteen headings: the wholesome and the unwholesome, the four nutriments of life, the Four Noble Truths, the twelve factors of dependent origination, and the taints. It should be noted that from the second section to the end of the sutta, he frames all his expositions in accordance with the same pattern, a pattern that reveals the principle of conditionality to be the scaffolding for the entire teaching. Whatever phenomenon he takes up, he expounds by bringing to light its individual nature, its arising, its cessation, and the way to its cessation. Since this is the pattern that underlies the Four Noble Truths, I shall call it “the four-truth pattern.” This pattern recurs throughout the Nikāyas as one of the major templates through which phenomena are to be viewed to arrive at true wisdom. Its application makes it clear that no entity is isolated and self-enclosed but is, rather, inherently linked to other things in a complex web of dependently originated processes. The key to liberation lies in understanding the causes that sustain this web and bringing them to an end within oneself. This is done by practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, the way to extinguish those causes.

The world-transcending right view, arrived at by penetrating any of the sixteen subjects expounded in the sutta, occurs in two main stages. The first stage is the right view of the trainee (sekha), the disciple who has entered irreversibly upon the path to liberation but has not yet reached its end. This stage is indicated by the words that open each section, “(one) who has perfect confidence in the Dhamma and has arrived at this true Dhamma.” These words signify right view as a vision of true principles, an insight that has initiated a radical transformation in the disciple but has not yet reached completion. The second stage is the world-transcending right view of the arahant, described by the closing words of each section. These words indicate that the disciple has used right view to eradicate