Right View

Perfect understanding or integral view or you can mismatch the translations of the first two words for the 8 fold path, part of the 4 noble truths: Pali: samyak-dṛṣṭi, Sanskrit: sammā-diṭṭhi. The Buddhist view is the opening frame of it all. How can you move towards the unconditioned when you can't talk about it? These and more questions raise up when I listen to Sangharakshita's 1968 talk about Right View.

There's an article in Lion's Roar with the byline: It’s possible that most Western Buddhists are “unaffiliated.” That is, they practice alone or in small informal groups not listed in the phone book or on the web. There is therefore no record, no official trace, of their activity. They practice off the books.

I've always thought that America would somehow produce an interesting form of Buddhism. In a discussion on r/secularbuddhism, it was pointed out that IMS is perhaps a secular Buddhist organization, but what I always find interesting about them is that they're a lay tradition of the Theravada ilk. Leave it to Americans to not fall in line on tradition. It is both our strength and our weakness, and I would also say that that was true of myself as well.

I have stepped away from Triratna. Honestly it was my negative actions and mistakes that pushed me away. Maybe that was what I needed. I'm surprised to see on r/Buddhism that my root sect isn't looked upon as even Buddhism sometimes. I get regularly downvoted, I'm not hard line enough. For better or worse Sangharakshita has formed my initial view of Buddhism, and I don't think that is bad. I have had amazing retreat experiences at Aryaloka that I will never forget. There is one point in the talk when Sangharakshita talks about having a flash of insight and forgetting it. I'm trying not to forget but I have to with pain admit that I haven't always acted on my insights, I got lost. I had trouble sustaining the right view.

In AA and recovery psychology, I can feel a kind of fight for right view. The need to find a higher power of your understanding is the quest for the right view. I like it that it is less insistent that you find the right doctrine. You must come to your understanding. Something needs to be beyond the nihilism of just drinking when your disease tells you to. 

I don't think Buddhism is a philosophy, I think it's a psychology of meditation. That may be controversial. What I like about psychology is that it's not insistent on dogma, everyone comes to their own understanding based on their psychology, personality, history, talents.

I'm not saying anything goes, and sometimes I am wary of diluted new age pablum. I forced myself to listen to The Power of Now. It's not bad, but I listen to a Theravada monk to balance it out.