Don't Miss the View

Don't miss the view. 

I feel like this every moment I am at the beautiful Oregon Coast, one of my favorite places in the world. I was lucky to be there over the holiday break with my family, watching waves and enjoy brisk days in front on a cozy fire.

Don't miss the view. What view am I missing today? What am I not seeing, not noticing, not understanding?

In Indian mysticism, they use the process of negation to discover truth, to see the view.  For example:

What is truth?
It is not my hand.

What is truth?
It is not my breath.

What is truth?
It is not this computer.

The process of negation leads one to de-attach from all the things we unknowingly see as "true" or important. The process leads one to a feeling of peace, settling, and the experience of what is rather than attachment to trying to control what is always moving and changing, becoming and dying.

Yet in that same moment, as we experience flashes of the real, we are more deeply attuned to all that is changing around us, because we have found the right viewpoint.  And this leads to the experience of deep, deep love for all of life; for life in all its complexity. Compassion.

2013 feels like a year of discovery, of searching, of finding that right view.

"Our happiness and the happiness of those around us depend on our degree of Right View. Touching reality deeply -- knowing what is going on inside and outside of ourselves -- is the way to liberate ourselves from the suffering that is caused by wrong perceptions. Right View is not an ideology, a system, or even a path. It is the insight we have into the reality of life, a living insight that fills us with understanding, peace, and love."

~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, page 51

What does it feel like for you?