The first fold of the Eightfold Path, Right View, is sometimes translated as Right Understanding and is explained by many commentators to mean that one has Right Understanding if one understands the Four Noble Truths.
But that common explanation doesn’t jive with the Buddha’s words. He said the first fold of the Eightfold Path was samma ditthi. Samma means right and ditthi means view of self. So the first fold of the Eightfold Path is the right view of self.
The Buddha often taught by using negatives. He explained samma ditthi by saying it was not sakkaya ditthi, the wrong view of self.
The belief that one is a personality, a person who somehow exists subjectively in an external world, someone who entered the world on a birth date and who will depart on an unknown future date, is wrong view. The Buddha said if we think we are our body, our feelings, our thoughts, our choices, our consciousness, then we suffer from sakkaya ditthi, the wrong view of self.
A person suffering from the wrong view of self feels threatened by a hostile world. So he or she buys a gun, or lots of guns. They support the military because in their fearful mind the military protects them from hostile forces. Fear of the outside world is the central motivating factor of their actions. They often seek a savior to cling to, someone supernatural they can pray to for protection, especially if a tornado is approaching.
Such a person has not realized the first fold of the Eightfold Path.
Such a person also scoffs at the idea of not killing animals for food so they re-interpret the first precept to prohibit the killing of other human beings. Some even go so far as to condemn hunting if the hunter does not intend to eat the “game.”
So we see that the meat eater does so from lack of compassion for other sentient beings and in disregard of the first precept. Meat is murder, tofu is not. And this lack of compassion arises from the false view of self. Not one of us can exist without others. No independent person has ever lived. All sentient beings are interwoven together like a spider’s web and only the deluded think they can step outside of that web.
Nor is there a god who can step outside of the web. No being exists outside of and separate from all other beings. The universe was not created by a god who is “out there” separate from everything else. There is no “out there.”
To hold the correct view of self is to see one’s self as interconnected to all life and that “out there” is actually “in here.”
With cultivation we see that killing a cow is killing our self because nothing is outside of us. A sentient being feels the knife that cuts its throat and a sentient being feels the blood and its life flowing out. Only a wrong view of self allows us to say: “It’s happening to that animal, not to me.”
So with the first fold of the Eightfold Path of right view we see the interconnectedness of all sentient beings and we understand why the first precept says do not kill. With wrong view, we kill and eat animals, thereby killing and eating ourselves. And we go to war to kill other human beings because during wartime it’s OK and we can be praised for killing.
We die when our compassion dies. Those who live without compassion and loving kindness are the walking dead. They think they are not a part of the web of life, that they are separate, independent beings who can commit countless acts of cruelty with impunity. They are smug in their views, certain that they owe no compassion or lovingkindness to anyone or anything.
They are indistinguishable from the American Indians who performed their ghost dances to make their bodies impervious to the white man’s bullets. Their strong belief did them more harm than good.
So keep on being a customer of the slaughterhouses; it’s just cows and pigs, not you. You are safe. You are you and they are them. You exist strong and proud, independent of all other life. You don’t need to practice Right Action. You can do all the Wrong Actions you want. Congratulations on your Great Enlightenment.
