Page 7 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

Perfect Vision

These lectures on The Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path were given
in London in 1967 under the auspices of The Friends of the

Western Buddhist Order. In them I sought to bring out, more
clearly than writers and speakers on Buddhism usually did, the

practical and experiential nature of that Path, the following of
which involves no less than the total transformation of every
aspect of human life, both individual and collective, in

accordance with a Vision of Reality actually perceived.

Such an approach is especially necessary in connection with the
subject matter of the first lecture, on ‘Perfect Vision'‘. In this
lecture I was therefore concerned to emphasize the fact that,

despite its usual translation as Right Understanding, samyag
drsti or Perfect Vision was a matter of spiritual experience more

than of rational knowledge, even though the latter was by no
means excluded. By way of illustrating the point I gave examples
of the different ways in which Perfect Vision could arise, from

the experience of bereavement to that of simple

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