The Higher Wisdom Trainings
“We are what we think. All that we are arises from our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind and trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart. We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak and act with a pure mind and joy will follow you as your shadow, unshakeable.” — The Buddha
Higher Wisdom trainings teaches us how to sense our direction on the path by understanding reality outside of concepts. Think of a hiker who studies a map before beginning a trek. The map is not the trail. But it makes much more sense to begin walking a path with some understanding of the terrain that one will be hiking.
The Higher Wisdom trainings are meant to help us awaken to perceiving things as they actually are.
There are two practices that comprise the Higher Wisdom Trainings: Skillful View and Skillful Thought
Skillful View, also known as Right Perspective, Right Outlook or Right Understanding, is a way of seeing that transcends all views. It is the practice of being free from holding to any one view, any one opinion or judgement, and perceiving the world just as it is. This perceiving is not in a physical sense, but in conceiving of reality outside of seeing with the eyes and ordinary mind—which has a tendency to separate things and create opposites. The purpose of practicing Skillful View is to help clear our path of confusion, misunderstanding, and delusion. Going back to the hiker metaphor, this is the action of the hiker cutting away all the thick undergrowth in order to walk a clear path.
To practice Skillful View, we need to understand that our perceptions are inherently flawed. It is our ignorance of this reality that distorts our perception and allows us to cling to this distortion as though it is the truth. Most of us never question our experiences because what we perceive seems so real. However, things don’t exist the way they appear to us. This is the important teaching of Skillful View.
Much of the practice of Skillful View takes time to embody, as it's a challenging shift in conceptual understanding. If you begin with the understanding that, as the Buddha taught, “Where there is perception, there is deception.” Then you will have made the first, and arguably, the most difficult shift toward practicing Skillful View.
How do our perceptions deceive us?
Most of us see an object and perceive that object as separate and independent from ourselves. Yet ten different people can see the same cloud in ten different ways. Different people can see the same object as ugly or beautiful. Each person believes their view is the correct view, and we rarely question our own perceptions. It's as though we think our mind is like a mirror simply reflecting truth. However, if objects really existed separately and independently, then an object viewed by ten people would appear exactly the same. But this is not how or mind and body perceives things.
Think of a time when you perceived something that initially seems very true, only to find out later how very wrong you were. For example, now the hiker is walking along the path and suddenly the hiker jumps back, heart racing. Across the path is a very large SNAKE! But after a few moments and upon closer inspection, the “snake” is revealed to be just a stick. At the moment of first perception the mind believed 100% in the delusion that the stick was a snake. The mind doesn’t see what IS there, rather it sees what IS NOT there.
Our experience of reality is like this. The reality we believe in is an illusion. What is really there the mind doesn't perceive. The belief in the illusion can create many problems. People can become very attached to their perceptions. The hiker who really believes that the stick is a snake and doesn’t ever see the stick will avoid the path, and try to to go another way, likely off the trail and possibly onto difficult or potentially more dangerous ground. Attachment to this delusion can result in great suffering. Holding to our views too tightly doesn’t allow us to be open and receptive to the varying possibilities that is the true nature of reality. If we check with ourselves and our perceptions of things, we can begin to see that things are not the way they initially seem.
Skillful View should be held with an open, flexible mind, without clinging to any particular view. We have perceptions, we experience reality. That cannot stop and the teaching of Skillful View is not meant to lead us toward ceasing our experiences and our perceptions. It doesn’t mean we have no views, have no opinions or make no judgements. Rather we are learning how to shift away from the ignorance of true reality that we have been socialized to accept and do not cling to our views, opinions or judgements.
How we come to understand things depends on a label, a basis, a cause and a condition. When ten people look at the same cloud and give ten different descriptions of that cloud, those descriptions are all based on previous experiences, ideas and internal states within each of the individuals. It's those internal states, previous experiences and ideas that determine how that cloud is perceived. This is because the object of our perception is not outside of us, but inside of us. The eyes see light patterns and the brain interprets the signals from the eyes into an image. The mind is what “makes” the cloud what it appears to be. The cloud cannot exist without a subject viewing it.
How do we know what a cloud is?
If objects truly existed independently, we would all just “know” a cloud upon seeing it. There would be no variation in how it is perceived. But that is not how we experience reality. We are taught what a cloud is. We are taught the labels for what we determine what a cloud is. And certain causes and conditions arise, based on our labels, to create what we identify as a cloud. If we take away one element of what we have determined a cloud is, the cloud ceases to be. Take away water. No cloud. Take away air. No cloud. Take away one element of a variety of weather conditions. No cloud. All things arise dependent of causes, conditions, parts, and our labeling minds. The cloud depends on the right conditions, parts and labels in order to be perceived by us. We cannot separate the cloud from all other aspects of reality and experience. Because of this, the thing we call “cloud” is not really there at all, it is an illusion. It is just a culmination of a long chain of conditions. We attach a label to this long and infinite chain. But this label is purely for convenience. It doesn’t actually describe reality.
Recognizing that we hold a wrong view is an important step toward identifying where we might be clinging and begin to free ourself. If we can understand that even though we are creating our perceptions, they are really false. Understanding the illusory nature of reality relieves us of much suffering, because we do not need to cling to ideas of right and wrong so tightly.
Opening up to this way of experiencing reality can seem overwhelming at first. And practicing Skillful View doesn’t mean we are meant to go around telling ourselves all the time what we are perceiving is not a cloud, not a person, not a door, etc. We will drive ourselves crazy trying to live this way. Instead, what we learn to do is to accept a fluidity of understanding. We allow a flexibility of mind, which doesn’t get caught up by the apparent contradictions of seeing past labels, ideas and faulty perceptions.
When we are practicing Skillful View we omit nothing. The mind holds to nothing in particular. Instead we let the mind just have actual experience moment by moment. This is where we can see how mindfulness practice emerges. We experience reality, but that is all. We have no need to add anything more to what we experience. We are open, receptive and flexible to all that is.
Skillful Thought is also known as Right Intention, Right Thinking, Right Resolve, Right Conception or Right Aspiration. With Skillful Thought we set our minds and our intentions, on ridding ourselves of those qualities that we know to be unwholesome and cultivate wholesome qualities. We start with practicing Skillful View to help us be more discerning and more clear about how to determine what is wholesome and what is unwholesome.
There is popular story frequently passed around the internet in which a grandfather says to his grandson, who came to him angry at a friend who he felt hurt by in some way, “Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times.”
He continued, “it's as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. It lives in harmony with all those around it and does not take offense when no offense was intended. It only fights when it is right to do so and only in an appropriate way. But the other wolf, ah! That other wolf is full of anger. The littlest thing will set it into a fit of rage. It fights everyone and everything, all the time, for no reason. It cannot think because its anger and hate are so great. It's helpless anger, because its anger changes nothing. Often its anger makes the situation worse, which makes the wolf angrier. Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit.”
The grandson looked intently into his grandfather’s eyes and asked, “which one wins, grandfather?”
His grandfather smiled and said softly, “the one I feed.”
With the practice of Skillful Thought we learn how to nurture and grow those wholesome qualities, which will produce a wholesome life. Most of our thinking is unnecessary. As you develop your meditation practice and begin to notice the quality of your thoughts, you will begin to understand the truth of this. Our mind produces thoughts like a waste product, just generating thought after thought after thought.
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn has developed a systematic way to practice Skillful Thought.
The Four Practices of Skillful Thought
The first step is to ask yourself, “Am I sure?”
Because we know that our perceptions are invariably flawed, it is important to develop the practice of checking in with ourselves often by asking, “Am I sure?” Wrong perceptions create incorrect thoughts and incorrect thoughts create unnecessary suffering. If you are able to identify a wrong perception before it gives rise to incorrect thoughts, you will save yourself much difficulty.
The second step is to then ask yourself, “What am I doing?”
This question helps to establish you in the present moment and release you from past or future thinking. When you pause to ask yourself, “What am I doing?” it slows you down, which allows you to become more engaged in what you are doing, rather than rushing to get through a task quickly. Rushing through a task encourages us to shift away from presence and allows for mistakes and accidents to happen, which ultimately contributes to suffering.
The third step is to acknowledge habit energy when it rises.
Working with the Noble Eightfold Path, at any step along the path, you will notice habit energies that may or may not have gone unnoticed before. The Noble Eightfold Path is meant to help us identify and let go of habit energies. We come to understand that our way of acting depends on how we think and how we think depends on our habit energy. When we are able to identify a habit energy, we are able to cut this chain of dependence. However, the key to letting go of a habit energy is simply to notice it when it appears. We don’t judge it, we don’t try to push it away or make ourselves feel guilty about it. Often just noticing is enough to loosen our grip and eventually, the habit energy begins to dissipate on its own.
The fourth step is practicing bodhichitta (The heart-mind).
We must balance Skillful Thought with the cultivation of compassion and patience. The spirit opens and becomes more flexible and resilient if it is held in an environment of caring and love. When you encounter an unwholesome quality within yourself, embrace it. Embrace yourself even with that unwholesome quality and forgive and support yourself despite it. Good things grow out of decay. Think of a beautiful garden thriving on a compost heap. Those very unwholesome qualities will give rise to wholesome ones. It is through your noticing of them that you begin to allow the breakdown of an unwholesome quality and begin turning it into the fertilizer for wholesomeness. Surround yourself with people who exemplify the kind of wholesome qualities you seek to grow within you. Spend time in wholesome environments.
The Higher Wisdom trainings are meant to help us awaken to perceiving things as they actually are.
There are two practices that comprise the Higher Wisdom Trainings: Skillful View and Skillful Thought
Skillful View, also known as Right Perspective, Right Outlook or Right Understanding, is a way of seeing that transcends all views. It is the practice of being free from holding to any one view, any one opinion or judgement, and perceiving the world just as it is. This perceiving is not in a physical sense, but in conceiving of reality outside of seeing with the eyes and ordinary mind—which has a tendency to separate things and create opposites. The purpose of practicing Skillful View is to help clear our path of confusion, misunderstanding, and delusion. Going back to the hiker metaphor, this is the action of the hiker cutting away all the thick undergrowth in order to walk a clear path.
To practice Skillful View, we need to understand that our perceptions are inherently flawed. It is our ignorance of this reality that distorts our perception and allows us to cling to this distortion as though it is the truth. Most of us never question our experiences because what we perceive seems so real. However, things don’t exist the way they appear to us. This is the important teaching of Skillful View.
Much of the practice of Skillful View takes time to embody, as it's a challenging shift in conceptual understanding. If you begin with the understanding that, as the Buddha taught, “Where there is perception, there is deception.” Then you will have made the first, and arguably, the most difficult shift toward practicing Skillful View.
How do our perceptions deceive us?
Most of us see an object and perceive that object as separate and independent from ourselves. Yet ten different people can see the same cloud in ten different ways. Different people can see the same object as ugly or beautiful. Each person believes their view is the correct view, and we rarely question our own perceptions. It's as though we think our mind is like a mirror simply reflecting truth. However, if objects really existed separately and independently, then an object viewed by ten people would appear exactly the same. But this is not how or mind and body perceives things.
Think of a time when you perceived something that initially seems very true, only to find out later how very wrong you were. For example, now the hiker is walking along the path and suddenly the hiker jumps back, heart racing. Across the path is a very large SNAKE! But after a few moments and upon closer inspection, the “snake” is revealed to be just a stick. At the moment of first perception the mind believed 100% in the delusion that the stick was a snake. The mind doesn’t see what IS there, rather it sees what IS NOT there.
Our experience of reality is like this. The reality we believe in is an illusion. What is really there the mind doesn't perceive. The belief in the illusion can create many problems. People can become very attached to their perceptions. The hiker who really believes that the stick is a snake and doesn’t ever see the stick will avoid the path, and try to to go another way, likely off the trail and possibly onto difficult or potentially more dangerous ground. Attachment to this delusion can result in great suffering. Holding to our views too tightly doesn’t allow us to be open and receptive to the varying possibilities that is the true nature of reality. If we check with ourselves and our perceptions of things, we can begin to see that things are not the way they initially seem.
Skillful View should be held with an open, flexible mind, without clinging to any particular view. We have perceptions, we experience reality. That cannot stop and the teaching of Skillful View is not meant to lead us toward ceasing our experiences and our perceptions. It doesn’t mean we have no views, have no opinions or make no judgements. Rather we are learning how to shift away from the ignorance of true reality that we have been socialized to accept and do not cling to our views, opinions or judgements.
How we come to understand things depends on a label, a basis, a cause and a condition. When ten people look at the same cloud and give ten different descriptions of that cloud, those descriptions are all based on previous experiences, ideas and internal states within each of the individuals. It's those internal states, previous experiences and ideas that determine how that cloud is perceived. This is because the object of our perception is not outside of us, but inside of us. The eyes see light patterns and the brain interprets the signals from the eyes into an image. The mind is what “makes” the cloud what it appears to be. The cloud cannot exist without a subject viewing it.
How do we know what a cloud is?
If objects truly existed independently, we would all just “know” a cloud upon seeing it. There would be no variation in how it is perceived. But that is not how we experience reality. We are taught what a cloud is. We are taught the labels for what we determine what a cloud is. And certain causes and conditions arise, based on our labels, to create what we identify as a cloud. If we take away one element of what we have determined a cloud is, the cloud ceases to be. Take away water. No cloud. Take away air. No cloud. Take away one element of a variety of weather conditions. No cloud. All things arise dependent of causes, conditions, parts, and our labeling minds. The cloud depends on the right conditions, parts and labels in order to be perceived by us. We cannot separate the cloud from all other aspects of reality and experience. Because of this, the thing we call “cloud” is not really there at all, it is an illusion. It is just a culmination of a long chain of conditions. We attach a label to this long and infinite chain. But this label is purely for convenience. It doesn’t actually describe reality.
Recognizing that we hold a wrong view is an important step toward identifying where we might be clinging and begin to free ourself. If we can understand that even though we are creating our perceptions, they are really false. Understanding the illusory nature of reality relieves us of much suffering, because we do not need to cling to ideas of right and wrong so tightly.
Opening up to this way of experiencing reality can seem overwhelming at first. And practicing Skillful View doesn’t mean we are meant to go around telling ourselves all the time what we are perceiving is not a cloud, not a person, not a door, etc. We will drive ourselves crazy trying to live this way. Instead, what we learn to do is to accept a fluidity of understanding. We allow a flexibility of mind, which doesn’t get caught up by the apparent contradictions of seeing past labels, ideas and faulty perceptions.
When we are practicing Skillful View we omit nothing. The mind holds to nothing in particular. Instead we let the mind just have actual experience moment by moment. This is where we can see how mindfulness practice emerges. We experience reality, but that is all. We have no need to add anything more to what we experience. We are open, receptive and flexible to all that is.
Skillful Thought is also known as Right Intention, Right Thinking, Right Resolve, Right Conception or Right Aspiration. With Skillful Thought we set our minds and our intentions, on ridding ourselves of those qualities that we know to be unwholesome and cultivate wholesome qualities. We start with practicing Skillful View to help us be more discerning and more clear about how to determine what is wholesome and what is unwholesome.
There is popular story frequently passed around the internet in which a grandfather says to his grandson, who came to him angry at a friend who he felt hurt by in some way, “Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times.”
He continued, “it's as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. It lives in harmony with all those around it and does not take offense when no offense was intended. It only fights when it is right to do so and only in an appropriate way. But the other wolf, ah! That other wolf is full of anger. The littlest thing will set it into a fit of rage. It fights everyone and everything, all the time, for no reason. It cannot think because its anger and hate are so great. It's helpless anger, because its anger changes nothing. Often its anger makes the situation worse, which makes the wolf angrier. Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit.”
The grandson looked intently into his grandfather’s eyes and asked, “which one wins, grandfather?”
His grandfather smiled and said softly, “the one I feed.”
With the practice of Skillful Thought we learn how to nurture and grow those wholesome qualities, which will produce a wholesome life. Most of our thinking is unnecessary. As you develop your meditation practice and begin to notice the quality of your thoughts, you will begin to understand the truth of this. Our mind produces thoughts like a waste product, just generating thought after thought after thought.
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn has developed a systematic way to practice Skillful Thought.
The Four Practices of Skillful Thought
The first step is to ask yourself, “Am I sure?”
Because we know that our perceptions are invariably flawed, it is important to develop the practice of checking in with ourselves often by asking, “Am I sure?” Wrong perceptions create incorrect thoughts and incorrect thoughts create unnecessary suffering. If you are able to identify a wrong perception before it gives rise to incorrect thoughts, you will save yourself much difficulty.
The second step is to then ask yourself, “What am I doing?”
This question helps to establish you in the present moment and release you from past or future thinking. When you pause to ask yourself, “What am I doing?” it slows you down, which allows you to become more engaged in what you are doing, rather than rushing to get through a task quickly. Rushing through a task encourages us to shift away from presence and allows for mistakes and accidents to happen, which ultimately contributes to suffering.
The third step is to acknowledge habit energy when it rises.
Working with the Noble Eightfold Path, at any step along the path, you will notice habit energies that may or may not have gone unnoticed before. The Noble Eightfold Path is meant to help us identify and let go of habit energies. We come to understand that our way of acting depends on how we think and how we think depends on our habit energy. When we are able to identify a habit energy, we are able to cut this chain of dependence. However, the key to letting go of a habit energy is simply to notice it when it appears. We don’t judge it, we don’t try to push it away or make ourselves feel guilty about it. Often just noticing is enough to loosen our grip and eventually, the habit energy begins to dissipate on its own.
The fourth step is practicing bodhichitta (The heart-mind).
We must balance Skillful Thought with the cultivation of compassion and patience. The spirit opens and becomes more flexible and resilient if it is held in an environment of caring and love. When you encounter an unwholesome quality within yourself, embrace it. Embrace yourself even with that unwholesome quality and forgive and support yourself despite it. Good things grow out of decay. Think of a beautiful garden thriving on a compost heap. Those very unwholesome qualities will give rise to wholesome ones. It is through your noticing of them that you begin to allow the breakdown of an unwholesome quality and begin turning it into the fertilizer for wholesomeness. Surround yourself with people who exemplify the kind of wholesome qualities you seek to grow within you. Spend time in wholesome environments.
