Shambhavi unpacks the nature of View teachings, the transmission of View, and the Dakini Machig Lapdron’s instruction to “hold no View.” Other topics in this wide-ranging satsang are the laziness of nondual spiritual bypassing, and how we meet spiritual opportunity. A podcast from Satsang with Shambhavi
Podcast First Words
I thought I’d just talk briefly tonight about View. I’ve been rewriting a lot of my books. Very early on in every book that I’ve written, there’s some discussion about View and what View is. This is usually in the introduction.
On one level, View teachings are the most important teachings you’ll get from any teacher. These teachings are the context or the umbrella that you’re sitting under when you’re doing practice in a particular tradition. View teachings answer questions like:
- What does this tradition say about the nature of reality?
- What does this tradition have to say about God?
- What does this tradition have to say about the purpose of spiritual life?
- What does this tradition have to say about the nature of the individual?
- What does this tradition say about human relationships?
- What does this tradition say about death and being born, and any aspect of living?
So these really big questions are the subject of View teachings. Then when we get to learn individual practices, View teachings are the bigger level of understanding of what the practice is about.
For instance, there’s the practice we just learned. I could’ve just said, “Chant om at these bindus.” But instead I told you what the bindus represent, that the practice is a purification practice, and what that means. Those are View teachings. And if you have View teachings, what happens when you go to do a practice is that you have kind of a beacon. You have some idea of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and the bigger picture, or the bigger context for the practice. So you don’t make something up.
