Right View and Humility: The Middle Path Mind

Never trust the mind. It isn't your mind, yet it will do anything to make you think that it is. Unless the mind is unraveling itself with wisdom, it is not putting itself to proper use. Right View is the view which serves to eliminate all notion of any viewer truly viewing, while also being the source of infinite compassion for all beings stuck in self-view. 

It is easy to judge the monsters outside our "self" but hard to see the origins of similar monsters within our "self." Although I and others have always considered my "self" a loving and compassionate being, I have nearly been a serial killer, a thief, a rapist, a psycho, all kinds of things that looking back I can see I was on the verge of becoming due to various urges, thoughts, and justifications. Even now I am seen by many as an arrogant asshole, and by others as almost a saint. I have learned that we must always be on guard against self deception, and especially when we start to feel important. This mind can never fully trust itself. Remember that a truly insane person will never think they are insane.

Even Shakyamuni Buddha himself was often filled with useless pompous thoughts, such as "I am so wise, I should go back and take my rightful place as king." Or, just after becoming enlightened, when someone asked who he was, The Buddha told the wanderling that he was "the Victor and Conqueror of the World, superior to gods and men, an All-Enlightened One beholden to no teacher." The Buddha later realized that his answer only served to alienate the wanderling, who perceived the Buddha as merely another arrogant fool.
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(This post is in relation to a previous post on the question of how can anything be known.)

No way to know anything, so what's the point?

Q: There is no way to know anything in my opinion.

A: Well then you must be wrong about that... haha! Get it?

I have found that when people are challenged to rethink their opinions about the nature of reality, they often come up with this idea that "nothing can be known" and therefore they need not take the challenge into consideration. This happens to me all the time, but less now than it used to. 

In fact, to say that nothing can be known, aside from being an oxymoronic statement, means that there is no point in trying to liberate ourselves, since the path to freedom cannot be known. However, if we look at those who have attained the deathless, we see that most (all?) of them have used the mind to know the path out of mind (and thus out of suffering). 

Buddha said that all of the teachings must eventually be left, just as one who crosses onto shore leaves their raft on the beach, but if one leaves the raft of logic while still in the ocean, they are in for some trouble.

Here is a post regarding how to view the mind practically, in a middle-path kind of way.

And here's a useful snippet I snagged:

And as Kyle Dixon quoted,

"…The process of eradicating avidyā is conceived… not as a mere stopping of thought, but as the active realization of the opposite of what ignorance misconceives. Avidyā is not a mere absence of knowledge, but a specific misconception, and it must be removed by realization of its opposite. In this vein, Tsongkhapa says that one cannot get rid of the misconception of 'inherent existence' merely by stopping conceptuality any more than one can get rid of the idea that there is a demon in a darkened cave merely by trying not to think about it. Just as one must hold a lamp and see that there is no demon there, so the illumination of wisdom is needed to clear away the darkness of ignorance."

Napper, Elizabeth, 2003, p. 103

This post is also very useful on the three modes of knowing reality.