A Conversation About Buddhism
Author: Anup Poudyal
Publisher: The Middle Way Publications
Edition: Authorised Machine-Accessible Edition
Section: Chapter 10
Chapter Title: Right View
Pāli Title: Sammā Diṭṭhi
Copyright: © 2026 Anup Poudyal. All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER TEXT

CHAPTER 10: RIGHT VIEW
Sammā Diṭṭhi

Author’s Note 10.1

In many presentations of the Eightfold Path, the journey begins with Right View. Here, it has appeared later, and that choice has been deliberate.

For most people, engagement with the Buddha’s teaching begins not with philosophy, but with experience. A wish for ease, clarity, or relief from mental strain often leads first to meditation or mindfulness. From there, questions naturally arise. What becomes clear quite quickly is that meditation does not stand on its own. When the conditions that support it are weak

or misaligned, practice becomes strained. As other aspects of the path are clarified and lived, stability begins to return. The path reveals itself as a single, interdependent movement rather than a set of separate practices.

Right View holds a unique place within this movement. It is subtle, and it does not arrive all at once. One begins with a workable understanding, just enough to orient practice. Over time, as experience accumulates and understanding deepens, that view refines itself. In this sense, everything both

begins and ends here. Right View is not something adopted, but something that gradually takes shape as seeing becomes clearer.

Right View can be described as the ignition of the path, the spark that allows everything else to function. It sits close to faith. At first, there may only be a willingness to trust that the path is worth walking. As practice bears fruit, that trust begins to rest on direct knowing.

Before turning more fully to this limb, hold a curious question quietly in mind:

If faith provides the initial spark, what allows faith itself to arise?

I invite you to pause here, sit quietly, and reflect on this question for a few minutes.

Question 1

I cannot help but metaphorically see the whole of Buddhism as a flower that keeps unfolding. The Buddha begins with the simple and sober statement, ‘There is suffering,’ and now, after circling through six limbs of the path, we arrive at Right View, which again begins by recognising, ‘There is suffering.’ It feels as if the Dhamma opens petal by petal and then returns to its centre.

In my mind, it looks like a flower with four outer petals, the Four Noble Truths. You examine each petal, and when you reach the fourth one, it transforms into an inner ring of eight petals, the Noble Eightfold Path. Then, within those eight petals, one of them, Right View, opens again into the original four. It is like a living mandala that keeps folding back into itself.

Is this a fair visual summary of how the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path interrelate?

What I also sense is that this unfolding is not linear. It can happen across a lifetime or in a matter of seconds during insight. The wheel seems to keep turning, the flower seems to keep flowering, at every scale of experience.

Is my intuition aligned with how Buddhism understands this, or am I drifting too far into metaphor?

Answer

Your metaphor of Buddhism as a flower continually unfolding is remarkably close to how the tradition itself describes the structure of the Dhamma. Far from being ‘carried away,’ you are intuitively seeing something that recurs throughout the early texts: the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold

Path are not two teachings, but one teaching viewed from different angles. In the suttas, the Eightfold Path is explicitly called ‘the way leading

to the cessation of suffering,’ which is the Fourth Noble Truth. And Right View, the first limb of the path, is defined as knowing the Four Noble Truths. So you are correct: the fourth petal opens into eight petals, and within those eight, one petal opens back into the original four. That circularity is intentional. The Buddha taught that the Dhamma invites investigation, again and again, with each cycle revealing a deeper layer.

The tradition also affirms what you sensed about scale. Insight can unfold slowly across decades, or it can unfold rapidly, even within a single moment of clear seeing. The wheel turns in both cosmic time and personal time. The Abhidhamma describes moment-to-moment cycles of experience, while the suttas speak of long arcs of practice across lifetimes. Both are valid lenses for the same unfolding.

The Buddha often used practical metaphors to illuminate lived experience rather than to build a conceptual map of reality or a philosophical system. While he did not employ imagery to describe the relationship between the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, your metaphor intuitively captures the circular interdependence that the suttas articulate more analytically.

So your metaphor is aligned: the Dhamma is recursive, self-revealing, and cyclical. Each layer opens into the next, and each return to the beginning reveals a deeper truth than before.

Question 2

Let’s go back to the question that I suggested exploring earlier in this chapter. What fuels faith? What is the very first spark, the initial cause, that makes someone want to trust a teaching enough to give it a try, even half-heartedly? I am not talking about external forces such as peer pressure, social fashion, following the crowd, cultural conditioning, family influence, or religious identity. I am asking about the inner cause, the thing that moves a person from indifference to curiosity, from curiosity to willingness, from willingness to faith.

And the answer seems almost embarrassingly simple: dissatisfaction. The sense that something in your present condition is not enough, not stable, not fulfilling. The feeling that life as it is cannot be the final answer. In Buddhist language, it is called dukkha and encompasses suffering, stress, friction,

and imbalance. This discomfort, small or intense, becomes the fuel that drives someone to seek a path, a method, a teacher, or a transformation.

But when I look at the bigger picture, something strange appears. This whole philosophy, the Buddha’s path, begins with acknowledging suffering and ends with the extinguishment of suffering (nibbāna). And if I think about this deeply, it becomes a kind of philosophical loop: the cause of nibbāna is suffering. If there were no dissatisfaction, no stress, no restlessness, then there would be no movement toward freedom at all. Without dukkha, there would be no path, no practice, no awakening.

This seems simple, but at a deeper level, it feels extraordinarily unfair. And not just through the lens of Buddhism. Every religion has this structure hidden somewhere: suffering pushes you toward God, liberation, heaven, salvation, moksha, Brahman, nirvana. Even in theistic traditions, it is troubling that God creates a world with suffering because that suffering is the only way to reach God-realisation. But in Buddhism, the puzzle becomes even sharper. At least in other religions, there is a beginning, a creation story, a first mistake, a fall from grace. In Buddhism, there is no beginning. You cannot point to

a first cause of suffering, no forbidden fruit, no original sin, no first error. Suffering and nibbāna wheel back on each other.

- Why is there suffering? So that it can be ended.

- Why is there nibbāna? Because suffering exists to be ended.

It is almost as if our awareness enters the story halfway through, without access to the first chapter. In this system, everything seems to propagate on its own. If you want suffering to end, here is the path that leads to its end. If you are completely happy as you are, then continue as you are. There is no divine commandment, no cosmic judge, no saviour coming to rescue you. Only the Buddha’s instruction: ‘Atta dīpā bhava, be a light unto yourself.’

I must be missing something in this circular structure. What am I missing?

Answer

What you are touching here is one of the deepest paradoxes in the entire Dhamma, and your intuition is not only correct, it is remarkably close to how the Buddha framed the path. Let’s take this step by step.

You Are Not Wrong: Dukkha Does Fuel the Path

In the Upanisa Sutta (Saṁyutta Nikāya 12.23), the Buddha gives the most explicit chain:

Dukkha → Saddhā → Pāmujja → Pīti → Passaddhi → Sukha → Samādhi → Yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana → Nibbidā → Virāga → Vimutti → Khayeñāṇa

Meaning:

1. Suffering leads to faith.

2. Faith leads to gladness.

3. Gladness leads to joy.

4. Joy leads to tranquillity.

5. Tranquillity leads to happiness.

6. Happiness leads to Samādhi.

7. Samādhi leads to seeing things as they truly are.

8. Seeing the truth leads to disenchantment.

9. Disenchantment leads to dispassion.

10. Dispassion leads to liberation.

11. Liberation leads to the knowledge that liberation has been achieved.

This is the Buddha’s own logic. You are not imagining the loop; the Buddha described it.

Looking More Closely at the Question

One thing may be worth examining more closely before trying to solve

your puzzle itself. Your question assumes that suffering exists for the sake of something, that it must have a purpose or a final explanation. But the Buddha rarely approached experience in that way.

Instead of asking why suffering exists in the universe, he asked something much closer to home: when dissatisfaction appears in your own mind, what is happening right then?

Look closely, and a pattern becomes visible. A pleasant experience arises, and the mind wants it to continue. An unpleasant experience arises, and the mind wants it to disappear. In both cases, the mind begins to push,

pull, resist, or cling. That movement, more than the experience itself, is what produces the friction we call dukkha.

Seen from this angle, the situation becomes much less mysterious. Suffering does not exist in order to produce awakening, and awakening is not the purpose of suffering. Rather, the moment dissatisfaction is clearly seen, the mind begins to notice the movements that create it. And once those movements are seen, the possibility of letting them go appears naturally.

This is why dissatisfaction becomes the first spark of faith. It is not because suffering was designed to guide us toward liberation. Rather, discomfort interrupts our complacency and forces the question: “Is this really necessary?” The moment that question becomes sincere, the search for understanding has already begun.

Why the Question of the Beginning Does Not Resolve the Problem

The puzzle you describe arises because the mind naturally wants a first cause. If suffering drives the search for liberation, then it seems only fair to ask where suffering itself began. Yet this line of questioning quietly assumes that discovering the beginning would resolve the problem.

The Buddha approached the matter differently. Rather than asking how things might have begun in the distant past, he examined how they are unfolding in the present. The early discourses repeatedly state that the beginning of saṃsāra cannot be found (Saṁyutta Nikāya 15.1). But more importantly, the Buddha indicates that discovering such a beginning would not resolve the problem of suffering.

Even if a first moment of ignorance could somehow be identified, it would not remove the craving, aversion, and confusion operating in the mind right now. The roots of suffering are not located in a remote origin story but in the present structure of experience.

For this reason, the teaching shifts the question. Instead of asking how existence should have begun or how it might once have been different, the Buddha asks a more practical question: how does suffering arise here and now?

Once that is understood, something remarkable becomes clear. The same conditions that produce suffering also contain the possibility of its ending. When ignorance is replaced by understanding and craving loosens its grip, the cycle weakens. The problem does not need to be traced back to its first appearance in order to be resolved. And when it is resolved, the restless search for answers falls away, along with the need to construct views about the

world.

In this sense, the search for a beginning turns out to be unnecessary.

Understanding the present process is enough. When the mind is known clearly, the question of how the whole system started loses its urgency. What matters is not where the wheel first began turning, but how it can stop turning now.

The Sense of Unfairness Dissolves When Suffering Is Understood Differently

The feeling of unfairness appears when suffering is interpreted as something imposed upon life, as though existence were designed in such a way that pain must occur in order for awakening to happen. But the Buddha’s teaching does not describe suffering in that way.

In early Buddhism, suffering is not a punishment, a lesson, or a requirement for liberation. It is a signal. It appears when the mind relates to experience through craving, resistance, and misperception.

In much the same way that physical pain warns the body that something is wrong, dukkha alerts the mind that its relationship with experience is misaligned. Because of this, suffering becomes the doorway to investigation. Discomfort naturally provokes attention. When the mind begins to examine the conditions producing that friction, understanding becomes possible.

The system is therefore not unfair. It is a matter of cause and effect. When ignorance operates, suffering appears. When ignorance fades, suffering fades with it.

The Sense of Unfairness Also Fades When Dukkha Is Understood Correctly

Part of the discomfort comes from the English word suffering. It naturally brings to mind intense pain, tragedy, and extreme hardship. But the Pāli word dukkha is broader than that. It includes obvious suffering, but it also refers to the quieter instability of life.

Life is not defined only by intense pain. Much of it is experienced as pleasant, meaningful, and beautiful. Yet even the most pleasant experience carries a subtle tension because it cannot remain unchanged. In this sense, dukkha is better understood as unsatisfactoriness or instability rather than constant suffering. When the word is understood this way, the sense of unfairness begins to balance out.

So What Are You Missing?

Perhaps only this: suffering is not the cause of nibbāna. It is the cause of the search for nibbāna. Nibbāna itself is not produced by suffering, effort, or time. It is described in the early texts as the unconditioned. It does not arise because something creates it; it becomes evident when the conditions that obscure it fall away.

For this reason, the tradition often uses analogy rather than explanation. Clouds do not create the sun. They merely draw attention to its absence. When the clouds part, the sun appears not as something newly produced, but as something that was never truly gone. In the same way, suffering does not produce liberation. It simply turns the mind toward what has been concealed.

Question 3

Each time I return to the Buddha’s teachings, I find myself impressed by both their grandeur and their precision. Experiences that usually feel tangled or vague are carefully taken apart, their hidden connections exposed, and then reassembled in a way that makes them workable. What feels mysterious in life becomes intelligible through clarity. There is a grounded confidence in this method that continues to stand apart from anything else I have encountered in philosophy or religion.

Now, before we enter the final limb, I have a question. From what

I understand, the Buddha brings up Right View not only in the context of liberation but also in relation to karma and the destinations towards which our actions can lead us. Wrong View seems particularly serious because it can influence how we understand and justify our own behaviour.

So I Want to Clarify Two Things.

First, based on the suttas, what exactly is included in Right View? What does it encompass when understood as the Buddha intended, rather than simply as a loose idea of ‘seeing things correctly’?

Second, how can we know whether a view is genuinely right rather than subtly wrong, including Buddhist views themselves? Most of us have acted from beliefs that seemed reasonable at the time, only to discover later that we were mistaken. If that can happen even with sincere reflection, how could someone outside the Dhamma, or outside any religion entirely, know whether the views guiding their life are reliable?

This is not an easy problem. Human beings are remarkably skilled at

using logic and rhetoric to defend almost anything. Like capable lawyers, we can construct arguments that make even harmful ideas appear reasonable. Intelligence alone cannot guarantee that the view guiding us is sound. The same ability to reason that helps us uncover mistaken beliefs can also be used to reinforce them.

Within the Buddhist framework, the stakes become even sharper. Consider the difference between two situations. A person may harm another in self-defence while still recognising that harming is regrettable and unwholesome. The act may bring painful consequences and inner disturbance, but the mind does not justify the harm as inherently right. In contrast, someone who harms others while believing that such behaviour is simply the natural order of things is acting from a very different foundation. Here the view itself endorses the action. In the discourses, this combination of harmful action and distorted understanding is treated as particularly serious.

So the core problem is this: if our own intelligence can justify almost anything, and the views we hold can profoundly influence how we think and act, what exactly is Right View, and how can we know whether the view guiding us is genuinely right?

Answer

Right View is frequently mentioned in Buddhist teaching, yet it is often understood in a way that differs from how the Buddha appears to have intended it. When we look closely at the early suttas, a crucial distinction emerges. The Buddha spoke of Right View in two related but distinct senses, each serving a different function on the path. Recognising this removes much confusion and provides a clearer foundation for practice.

1. What Is Included in Right View According to the Suttas?

In the early texts, Right View is presented in two complementary dimensions:

- Mundane Right View (lokiya-Sammā-diṭṭhi)

- Supramundane Right View (lokuttara-Sammā-diṭṭhi)

These are not competing doctrines but two depths of understanding.

Mundane Right View (Lokiya-Sammā-diṭṭhi)

Mundane Right View functions primarily as a form of protection. It safeguards a person from views that justify harmful actions or deny the importance of intention, views that the Buddha repeatedly warned lead to pro-

found suffering, both here and beyond this life. In the suttas, mundane Right View includes the understanding that:

- Actions have consequences.

- Wholesome and unwholesome actions bring corresponding results.

- Generosity, offerings, and ethical conduct have meaning and value.

- Mother and father are worthy of honour and respect.

- There is this world and the next world.

- There are beings reborn spontaneously in different realms of existence.

- There are ascetics and contemplatives who have realised truth for themselves and can teach the path.

These points are not presented as metaphysical claims meant to be proven, but as orientations that stabilise ethical responsibility. They establish the understanding that intention matters, that actions shape experience, and that harm and care are not morally neutral. This level of Right View does not yet liberate. Rather, it prevents a person from falling into forms of confusion where harm feels justified, inevitable, or meaningless.

The Buddha’s simile of a burning coal captures this well. A person who knows the coal is hot drops it quickly. A person who does not know may hold it and suffer severe burns. Mundane Right View is that basic knowledge. It does not free one from all suffering, but it prevents the worst forms of self-destruction born of ignorance.

Supramundane Right View (lokuttara-Sammā-diṭṭhi)

Supramundane Right View is the seeing that liberates. The Buddha defines it as the direct understanding of the Four Noble Truths:

* This is suffering.

* This is the origin of suffering.

* This is the cessation of suffering.

* This is the path leading to the cessation of suffering.

* It also includes insight into Dependent Origination, seeing how experience arises through conditions, how the sense of self is constructed, how craving and grasping give rise to becoming and

suffering, and how this entire process can cease when its conditions are understood and released.

This is not belief or philosophy. It is knowledge born of direct insight. When fully established, it uproots ignorance at the root and brings an end to suffering altogether. Supramundane Right View does not replace mundane Right View. It fulfils it. The same clarity that prevents disastrous actions becomes the clarity that dissolves suffering entirely.

In simple terms:

- Mundane Right View keeps one safe.

- Supramundane Right View sets one free.

2. How Can We Know Whether a View Is Truly Right View?

The first step is the willingness to admit that our current understanding may be mistaken. This presents an unavoidable difficulty at the beginning of the path. If Right View has not yet been established through direct understanding, we cannot begin with certainty. We have to begin somewhere.

This is where faith and confidence have an important role. A person may initially have enough confidence in the Buddha, the Dhamma, or those who have practised it deeply to take the teaching seriously and put it into practice. That confidence provides a starting point while understanding is still developing. It allows us to walk the path before we can see its entire course for ourselves.

The teaching can then be practised, tested, questioned, clarified, and applied in life. Its effects can be observed in our conduct and in the mind itself. As understanding develops, what initially depended partly on confidence can increasingly be confirmed through experience. In this sense, confidence does not need to do the work of understanding. It gives us enough ground to begin while understanding catches up.

How Do We Know a Path Is True?

We can take this question one step further. How do we know that Buddhism itself is right? For that matter, with so many religions, philosophies, teachers, and spiritual practices claiming to know the truth, how could anyone possibly determine which path is genuinely leading towards liberation?

Remarkably, a version of this question was put to the Buddha during the final hours of his life. A wanderer named Subhadda heard that the

Buddha was expected to pass away that very night and hurried to see him. He asked Venerable Ānanda for permission to speak with the Buddha, but Ānanda refused three times, concerned that his teacher was exhausted and should not be disturbed. The Buddha overheard their exchange and told Ānanda to let Subhadda approach.

Subhadda wanted to know about the prominent spiritual teachers of the time. Had they genuinely realised what they claimed to have realised, or had they not? Faced with this question near the end of his life, the Buddha did something revealing. He did not spend his remaining time comparing teachers, defending Buddhism against its rivals, or asking Subhadda to accept his authority. He redirected the question towards something far more practical: look at the path being practised.

His answer was uncompromising. Wherever the Noble Eightfold Path is found, genuine stages of awakening can be found; where the Noble Eightfold Path is absent, they cannot.

This cuts through a confusion that remains just as relevant today. A religious label, philosophy, devotion, intelligence, or sincerity cannot by itself establish that a path leads to liberation. From the Buddhist perspective, the decisive question is whether the path itself is actually being cultivated.

The Danger of Cleverness

As you already pointed out in the question, human intelligence can be used to make almost anything sound reasonable. When that ability is not grounded in something stable and trustworthy, it does not protect us from error; it magnifies it. Within Buddhism, this is why wrong view is treated so seriously. Because of this, the Buddha does not ask us to judge a view by how convincing it sounds, but by the kinds of mental states and actions it consistently produces.

Right View is known by its effects. The Buddha repeatedly directs attention to the results of a view. Wrong view tends to produce:

- Agitation and confusion

- Increased craving and clinging

- A hardened sense of self

- Actions that harm oneself or others

- Mental states marked by regret or concealment Right View tends to produce:

- Cooling of craving

- Clarity and calm

- Ethical confidence

- Loosening of identification

- Increased compassion

- A natural willingness to let go

The Buddha frequently describes the path in terms of abandoning greed, aversion, and delusion, suggesting that Right View may be recognised by the degree to which it supports their cessation (Aṅguttara Nikāya 3.66). Right View is not measured by sophistication or rhetorical strength. It is measured by what it does to the mind and the life that follows from it.

View as the Forerunner

The Buddha treats Right View as the forerunner of the path. View shapes intention. Intention shapes action. Action shapes habit and character. Together, they shape experience and destiny. Two people may perform the same action outwardly, yet the karmic result differs entirely depending on the view behind it. For this reason, wrong view is especially dangerous. It does not merely add weight to karma; it colours the entire stream.

Right View, then, is not simply a philosophical position. It concerns the direction of a life, how one affects others, and, in the Buddha’s terms, where one is likely to go next. Seen this way, cultivating Right View is not

a one-time conclusion but an ongoing responsibility, one that continues to shape how the path unfolds at every step.

Question 4

You have said that faith or confidence has an important place, particularly before understanding has been confirmed through direct experience. This is where I encounter a difficulty of my own. What exactly am I being asked to have faith and confidence in, and how far should that confidence extend?

My confidence in the Dhamma is deeply rooted in practice. I have seen enough of its effects on my own mind to trust the direction in which the Buddha is pointing. But I cannot honestly say that the same confidence extends to every statement preserved in the early texts.

There are passages that make me hesitate. In one, an enormous fish is

described as being five hundred yojanas long, which, by ordinary estimates, would make it thousands of kilometres in length. Elsewhere, Rāhu the Asura is described as seizing Candimā, the moon, in an account associated with what we would now understand as a lunar eclipse. I cannot reconcile such descriptions, when read literally, with what we now know about the natural world.

This does not make me reject the Buddha or the Dhamma. Yet I also do not want to resolve the tension by simply accepting something because it appears in a Buddhist text. If faith requires me to set aside reason whenever the two appear to conflict, then I find myself struggling with what faith is supposed to mean on this path.

I experience a similar difficulty with confidence in the Saṅgha. I cannot automatically extend the same trust to every monk, nun, teacher, institution, or Buddhist community. When I encounter people who embody humility, wisdom, restraint, and integrity, confidence arises naturally. When I encounter factionalism, misconduct, competition, or arguments over who represents the ‘true’ teaching, that confidence weakens.

So what does confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Saṅgha actually ask of me? Can I have deep confidence while remaining uncertain about particular claims, questioning parts of the textual tradition, and disagreeing with individual members of the Saṅgha? Or does Right View eventually require a kind of faith that goes beyond what I can establish through reason and experience?

And perhaps most importantly, how do I distinguish healthy investigation from the kind of doubt that the Buddha regarded as an obstacle to awakening?

Answer

I think the difficulty becomes easier to resolve once we separate faith from unquestioning belief. In the early Buddhist teachings, saddhā, often translated as faith or confidence, gives us sufficient trust to enter the path and practise it seriously, while understanding develops through investigation and experience.

Faith and confidence in the Buddha therefore does not have to mean believing that every statement preserved in the Buddhist texts must be literally and historically true. The texts were transmitted within an ancient Indian world that included cosmological ideas, supernatural beings, enormous spans of time and distance, and explanations of natural phenomena very different

from our own. Whether a particular passage should be understood literally, symbolically, as part of its cultural setting, or in some other way is a legitimate question. Finding such a passage difficult to accept is not the same as rejecting the Buddha’s central teaching.

What matters is what we do with that uncertainty. There is a significant difference between saying, ‘I cannot accept this claim because it conflicts with the evidence available to me,’ and saying, ‘Because I cannot accept this claim, everything the Buddha taught must therefore be false.’ The first preserves discernment while leaving room for further understanding. The second allows one unresolved issue to determine our judgement of everything else.

Confidence in the Dhamma can deepen through verification. We

may begin by giving a teaching enough trust to test it. Does craving intensify suffering? Does clinging make experience more difficult? What happens when anger is fed, and what happens when it is understood and released? Does mindfulness reveal aspects of experience that normally pass unnoticed? As these things become clearer, confidence rests less on authority and increasingly on understanding. Other teachings may remain beyond our present ability to verify, and intellectual honesty requires us to acknowledge that rather than pretend to know.

The Saṅgha requires another important distinction. In the traditional refuge formula, the Saṅgha praised as worthy of gifts and respect is the community of noble disciples: those who have genuinely realised the path and its fruits. This is not the same as claiming that every monk, nun, teacher, monastery, or Buddhist institution is beyond criticism. Ordination does not remove human weakness, and confidence in the Saṅgha does not require us to ignore misconduct, factionalism, poor judgement, or hypocrisy. Discernment may require us to recognise these things clearly.

This also helps clarify the kind of doubt that is abandoned with stream-entry. The fetter of doubt is not simply the capacity to ask questions. If questioning itself were the problem, investigation would have no place on the path. The deeper issue is an uncertainty about the path that prevents the mind from becoming firmly established in it. When understanding becomes sufficiently direct, certain fundamental questions no longer depend upon belief because the practitioner has seen enough to know the direction for themselves.

There is therefore no need to manufacture certainty prematurely. Saying ‘I don’t know’ can sometimes be more consistent with Right View than forcing oneself to believe something because a tradition expects it. At

the same time, scepticism can become its own attachment. A claim should not be accepted merely because it is ancient, but neither should it be rejected merely because it does not fit comfortably within our present worldview. The willingness to investigate must operate in both directions.

This is where faith and reason can coexist within Right View. Confidence allows us to practise without requiring every question to be answered in advance. Investigation prevents that confidence from hardening into dogma. Experience gradually reveals what can be known directly, while honesty allows other questions to remain unresolved when the evidence does not justify certainty.

Healthy investigation keeps looking. Doubt becomes an obstacle when it leaves us unable or unwilling to practise, commit, or learn from what experience is showing us. Right View does not ask us to silence questions. It asks us to investigate deeply enough that, where understanding becomes possible, we no longer need either belief or disbelief to stand in its place.

Question 5

That was a detailed explanation and exactly what I was hoping to understand. Let us continue with the theme of Right View and apply it to one of the most fundamental questions people carry: the idea of God. For many people, the existence of God is not a distant philosophical question. It feels obvious, natural, and unquestionable, often shaped by upbringing, culture, or personal experience. This is therefore not merely an intellectual inquiry, but one that often touches deeply held beliefs and assumptions.

To be precise, the concern here is with the idea of a single, all-powerful creator God: the one true source behind everything. Does the Buddha address the existence or non-existence of such a being? And perhaps more importantly, how does he guide us in relating to this idea in practice?

Answer

When it comes to the idea of a single, all-powerful creator God, the early discourses do not provide a simple yes-or-no answer. The Buddha neither declares that such a being exists nor explicitly states that such a being does not exist. Instead, the discourses contain a number of teachings that help clarify how he understood powerful divine beings, claims of creation, and the role such views play in spiritual life.

In the early discourses, there are many references to higher beings.

Some are described as powerful deities associated with natural forces such as earth, water, fire, and air. Others are Brahmā beings who, in some cases, are regarded as creators, both by themselves and by those who encounter them. In one discourse, the scale of their power is illustrated by comparing a noble counting gold coins in the palm of his hand to a Brahmā holding hundreds, even thousands, of world-systems within his grasp. These beings therefore occupy an extraordinary place within the Buddhist picture of existence, possessing powers and lifespans far beyond ordinary human experience.

The Buddha also explains how belief in a creator can arise. In the Brahmajāla Sutta, he describes how, after a world-system contracts and later begins to expand again, a powerful being arises alone in a Brahmā realm and remains there for an immensely long period. Eventually, he wishes for other beings to appear. When other beings subsequently arise there, due to the conditions of their own kamma, he concludes that they appeared because

of his wish. The newcomers, finding this powerful being already present, reach the same conclusion. Given the immense lifespans and extraordinary power attributed to beings in these realms, it becomes easier to understand how both the Brahmā and those around him could sincerely regard him as an eternal creator.

The Buddha acknowledges the existence of such beings and, in many discourses, interacts with them directly. What is noteworthy, however, is that he does not treat them as ultimate authorities. In several suttas, these very beings approach the Buddha with questions, and he instructs them as a teacher would instruct students. They may possess extraordinary power and extraordinarily long lives, but they are not necessarily beyond ignorance, conditions, or the need for further understanding.

This also helps clarify how a practitioner should relate to such beings. Their greater power or lifespan does not make them objects of ultimate authority, but neither are they treated with hostility or contempt. Goodwill can be extended towards them just as it is towards other beings. Some discourses also describe benevolent devas as responding favourably to virtuous practitioners, at times offering protection, assistance, or encouragement.

Aṅguttara Nikāya 4.21 provides another important perspective by asking what, if anything, could stand above even the most accomplished being. Shortly after his enlightenment, the Buddha reflected that it was difficult to live without anyone to honour and look up to. He considered whether there might be another ascetic or brahmin more accomplished than himself in virtue, concentration, wisdom, or liberation, whom he could honour and

respect. Yet within this world and the worlds of devas and Brahmās, he could find no one who surpassed him in these qualities. Rather than placing himself at the summit and stopping there, he chose to honour the Dhamma to which he had awakened. Brahmā Sahampati then appeared and affirmed that the Buddhas of the past had likewise honoured the Dhamma, and that future Buddhas would do the same.

What stands highest in this account, then, is not another being above the Buddha, but the Dhamma itself: the truth he had directly realised and

the path through which others could realise that same freedom for themselves. This introduces an important distinction. If by God we mean a single supreme being who stands above all others and creates the world, then the Buddhist framework does not support that idea. But different spiritual traditions use the word God in broader ways, sometimes to point towards ultimate truth, the deepest nature of reality, or the highest happiness. If the question

is framed in those terms, the comparison becomes much more subtle, and Buddhism may have considerably more to say.

The Mūlapariyāya Sutta sheds light on what may have been one of the Buddha’s deeper concerns when approaching questions of this kind. The issue is not simply whether a particular being exists or does not exist. The Buddha’s attention turns towards the way the mind relates to whatever it perceives.

In this discourse, he explains that an uninstructed person does not stop at simple perception. Having perceived something, even something as grand as Brahmā, the mind begins constructing ideas around it. It conceives itself in relation to it, identifies with it or distinguishes itself from it, and takes delight in it. What began as perception becomes entangled with conception, identity, and attachment.

The Buddha then describes how this process changes in one who has developed liberating understanding. Rather than constructing further ideas and identity around what is perceived, experience is known without the same appropriation and attachment:

- What is perceived is known directly.

- It is not appropriated as “me” or “mine.”

- The mind does not construct itself in relation to it.

- It does not become another position through which identity is established.

• It is not grasped as an idea that must be defended or argued about.

In this way, the sutta shifts the inquiry. The deeper question is not only what is perceived, but how the mind takes up what is perceived. From this perspective, even a correct idea can become a source of confusion if it is grasped in the wrong way. The problem is not merely a particular belief, but the tendency of the mind to turn views into identities. Ideas can become positions, positions can become objects of attachment, and attachment can become a source of conflict.

Taken together, these teachings do not provide a simple declaration for or against a creator God. What they do provide is a consistent picture. The Buddha acknowledges powerful divine beings, examines claims of creation, and treats such questions as matters worthy of investigation without making them the foundation of the path.

Author’s Note 10.2

It is sobering to realise that even ideas and views that seem completely reasonable and logical can be mistaken. The difficulty is that confusion rarely presents itself as confusion. Most of the time it appears as common sense, a reasonable position, intellectual rigour, or even certainty.

This raises an uncomfortable question. How do we know whether what we regard as true is actually true? Before the path can even begin, there must be some willingness to accept that deeply held views, beliefs, and assumptions may be incomplete. That is not easy. Finding a teaching worthy of trust is difficult. Putting that teaching into practice can be more difficult still, especially when it challenges long-held ways of understanding ourselves and the world.

Yet faith alone is not enough. If understanding, peace, and clarity do not gradually grow through practice, confidence naturally weakens. For this reason, what I find most compelling about the Buddha’s teaching is that it repeatedly returns to direct experience. It invites investigation rather than unquestioned acceptance. The teachings can be tested, the results can be observed, and confidence develops through seeing for oneself rather than through belief alone.