Living the View
Living the view is the practice-register at which the Dzogchen view is not merely intellectually-held but operationalised as stance-toward-experience.
The Ch.11 Practice-Definition
A questioner asks how to approach “justification should be uncompassionately murdered” at a practical level. NR:
“Just approach it on a practical level… Just find yourself in your life situation and let that interplay be what is real. This, as far as I’m concerned, is the very heart of Tantric practice. The approach is to hold it in your heart. This is called living the view. You have to allow yourself to take in the transmission that is etched into those words.”
KD: “There is a feeling there: ‘justification should be uncompassionately murdered’. Stay with that feeling.”
NR:
“Living the view is, actually, a matter of inspired application. On a practical level you would simply attempt to remain in the awareness of the view. You’d make a practice of attempting to remember the view whenever you recognised the pattern of [the neurosis] colouring your perception.”
“That’s not particularly easy — but it is simple. You couldn’t get much more simple than that. Also… you have to make a practice of forgiving yourself for continually failing. That’s a valuable part of the process. It’s a practice simply to be a practitioner and, to keep that sense of recognition present.”
Structural Components
Living the view has four named components in this Ch.11 treatment:
- Hold the view in the heart — not cognitive-abstraction-level but felt-saturation-level. The transmission is “etched into the words”; holding them in the heart is the reception-mode.
- Attempt to remain in the awareness of the view — not one-off attainment but continuous attempt. The continuous-attempt is the practice.
- Remember the view when the neurosis-pattern arises — the operational-trigger: neurosis-noticing as the signal to return to view-awareness.
- Forgive yourself for continually failing — the self-compassion component. The failure is not a sign of practice-failure but is part of the process. Without self-forgiveness, living-the-view collapses into anxiety-about-failure (which is itself the neurosis).
”Not Easy But Simple”
NR’s distinction: “not particularly easy — but it is simple. You couldn’t get much more simple than that.”
- Simple — structurally; the operation is one move (remember the view; let the neurosis-pattern dissolve in recognition).
- Not easy — phenomenologically; the neurosis-pattern is habitual and persistent; remembering-the-view is interrupted thousands of times per day.
This is the gradual-aspect-of-nongradual-practice: non-gradual in that each remembering is complete; gradual in that most remembering-moments are followed by forgetting-moments.
The Three Terrible Oaths as Living the View
Ch.9’s treatment of the Three Terrible Oaths:
“These ‘oaths’ constitute a stance in which one positively wills every situation to be exactly as it is. This is a tremendously direct and powerful expression of living the view, which is, of course, a very advanced stance to assume.”
The oaths are the maximum-form of living-the-view. Most practitioners will not be able to sustain the oaths; but the oaths supply the inspirational direction that living-the-view heads toward at its full-development.
Distinguished From Intellectual Understanding
Living the view is specifically not the same as understanding the view intellectually. The Ch.11 Q&A is explicit: “Understanding the idea of intrinsic seduction is not really a matter of intellect. We could talk about it, but I feel that you’d be better off resonating.”
Resonance = the living-the-view mode: direct perception + felt-saturation + non-intellectual recognition.
The intellect is a sense-field (Ch.11: “you can feel with your mind and think with your nose”). Living the view uses all sense-fields, not just the intellect-sense-field.
Structural Position in the Methodology
Living the view closes the action triad of Ch.3 into operational form:
- View — the uncharacterised way in which we see ourselves and our surroundings (Ch.3).
- Meditation — shi-nè as “the discovery of space” (Ch.3).
- Action — “the endless and spontaneous dance ignited by precise sensitivity to whatever happens” — equated by the Q&A with lhun-drüp (Ch.3).
Living the view = view + action at the practitioner’s register. It is not meditation-in-a-separate-time, and not intellectual-understanding-of-view — it is the held view that shapes how action arises in each moment.
”Inspired Application”
NR’s phrase: “a matter of inspired application.”
- Inspired — not forced through willpower; arises from the view’s living-presence.
- Application — actually applied, not merely theoretical.
The inspiration-component is important: living the view is not a grim discipline-exercise. If it becomes grim, the view is not being held (because grimness is the affective-signature of poverty-mode earth-neurosis or hyperactive-cowardice air-neurosis).
Element-Specific Forms of Living the View
Each element-chapter’s practice-gesture is a living-the-view in that element’s register:
| Element | Living-the-view gesture (from Embracing Emotions as the Path) |
|---|---|
| Earth (Ch.6) | Generosity-wealth-inseparability |
| Water (Ch.7) | Cut justification; admit weakness (“strength of admission”) |
| Fire (Ch.8) | Stare into desire with non-conceptual attention |
| Air (Ch.9) | Trust intrinsic space; integrate naivete/cynicism |
| Space (Ch.10) | Let go and let be |
Each is a specific-form of living-the-view adapted to that element’s form-quality-demand.
The Failure-Mode
“Easy options are for New Age workshops and I’m not particularly convinced of the use of those.” — KD
Specific failure-mode: looking for a technique that performs living-the-view automatically. The living-the-view practice is not a technique; attempts to turn it into a technique will produce either mechanical performance (view-not-actually-held) or perfectionist-anxiety (failing to remember-the-view producing more self-blame).
The practice is:
- Remember the view (moment).
- Notice you’ve forgotten (moment).
- Forgive yourself (moment).
- Remember the view (moment).
- …
Related
- View Meditation Action — the Ch.3 triad within which living-the-view is the operational-component
- Three Terrible Oaths — the maximum-form of living-the-view
- Justification — the Ch.7 licensing-operation that Ch.11’s living-the-view treatment anchors around
- Shi-nè — the meditation-practice that opens space for living-the-view
- Lhun-drüp — the action-register of the view/meditation/action triad; living-the-view operationalised
- Spectrum of Ecstasy - 16 Ch.11 Five-fold Display — source: the Ch.11 practice-definition
- Spectrum of Ecstasy - 14 Ch.9 Green Khandro-Pawo Display — source: Three Terrible Oaths as living-the-view maximum-form
- Spectrum of Ecstasy - 08 Ch.3 View Meditation and Action — source: the triad within which living-the-view operates
- Embracing Emotions as the Path — element-specific forms of living-the-view
- Kindness — the self-compassion component (forgiveness-of-continual-failing)
- Nongradual Approach — living-the-view as gradual-practice of nongradual-recognition
- Imitating Enlightenment — the technique-ification failure-mode of living-the-view