What "right view" or "wise reflection" helped you move towards greater acceptance?

On ‘Right View’ and 'Wise Reflection’

When I started many years ago with strong afflicted emotions without any teacher or suttas, in my mind I translated ‘right’ as ‘wholesome’ (view, intention, speech etc). I remembered my general wholesome state of mind and ‘goodness’ many times in my childhood and this helped me come back to greater acceptance inspite of difficult situation and emotion. I also knew from my Buddhist upbringing, that ignorance is the cause of greatest suffering. My intention was clear and strong…to be free of ignorance and suffering … to return to and sustain wholesome habits of thinking and inner dialogue on a daily basis.
Acceptance, in Buddhist terms, refers to our ability to stay present . When life presents us with something the ego finds painful and unpleasant, the mind’s tendency is to resist, avoid, change or push against. Strangely I noticed that the more I accepted my vulnerabilities the greater I could accept others with all their shortcomings. Suffering comes not directly from pain, but from one’s attachment to the pain (dukkha dukkha) and unwholesome view .

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These past few days, I have been contemplating some of my own emotional wounds and scars that I have accumulated through life so far.

It has made me think of the practice of kintsugi, i.e. the mending of broken objects with gold:

Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”),[1] is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum; the method is similar to the maki-e technique.[2][3][4] As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.[5]

I can’t help but feel that developing good qualities towards yourself and others, like kindness and compassion, is kind of like mending one’s “broken parts” with gold.

Looking back, it seems to me that those things that are “broken” are really those things that cut you off from your own good qualities.

But that can be mended, and like kintsugi, the result is much more beautiful than if you were flawless from the get-go :slight_smile:

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Yes, when these “unwholesome” parts of us rise up, everything seems dark, even our view of ourselves. But I think this is an unavoidable cycle, at least in my experience. Just like with nature, my moods cycle between bright as day and dark as night. Earlier I used to get washed out as per the moods, but now I just take rest and do only what’s essential when the moods are darker,basically treating it as the night time.

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Especially when emptiness becomes apparent:

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There are probably 3 understandings which paved the way to all others in my own experience. These are extremely basic, yet they were a necessary starting point in the journey.

The first one is that there is responsibility for the response to whatever happens. Clearly there is some strong conditioning, yet that is not an excuse not to cultivate wholesome qualities at the very best of the possibilities. To say it with Ajahn Brahm, nobody can steal your happiness without your consent. Similarly, Viktor Frankl would mention the space between stimulus and response.

The second main realisation was that emotions and feelings are impermanent and arise in response to stimuli (usually short-term). It is a choice whether to believe or not to the story these emotions carry. It is important, instead, to acknowledge and take care of the emotions as they flow.

The consequences of responsibility and impermanence have been beautifully described above by @Erika_ODonnell and @Gillian.

The third was an (admittedly still very partial) understanding of letting go, as a deep acceptance and making peace, rather than some type of aversion or trying to get rid of something.

Hope this helps.

With Metta

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Thank you. I find the points you mentioned come up again and again when talking about acceptance indicating these are somewhat universal in nature. Also these points do agree with my experience in my practice.

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