Two weeks ago we ended with a consideration of the word samma and you were invited to explore the implications of a totality perspective in your daily lives. If you gave this a try, you will know directly how difficult it is. Only when we begin to realize how much we think, speak and act without awareness of totality do we begin to develop as students of the path of liberation. We have to see how much our lives are dominated by partiality. This lovely word can mean two things: preference and incompleteness — really the same, when you stop to consider.
Tonight’s task is very big . . . to give an overview of The Eightfold Noble Path as the foundation for our life as practitioners. So we have to start with the first principle the Buddha taught, also the most difficult: totality view or totality understanding. We’ll spend a lot of time with this principle, because
all the rest flows from it. Samma ditthi means knowing the nature of reality as an awakened being would know it — directly, without concepts. But for us, who dwell so incompletely in the realm of concepts, we can try to use them skillfully, as the Buddha did.