To: Cchenfong
From D. C. Wijeratna

You quoted a portion of an e-m written by me:
"My name is Chong Chen Fong. Here, I would like to express my opinion

regarding DC Wijeratna's words that "To be a Buddhist one has to

give up all views. This is the essential first step to understand

the teaching of the Buddha."
And followed it up with the following:
"Well, firstly, my purpose here is not based on ego or any other unwholesome motives but purely because I strongly believe that one has to straighten and perfect one's own view in the course of Dhammafaring."

Above two statements, (1) give up all views, (2) perfect one's own view, appear to contradict each other.
However, it depends on the meaning attributed to "view". In statement (1), "view" refers to micchaadi.t.thi and in statement (2) "view", I presume, refers to "sammaadi.t.thi". The Buddha's advice is to give up all "micchaadi.t.thi" and acquire sammaadi.t.thi. Then, of course, to perfect it. So there is no contradiction in the two statements. The problem had occurred because in the tranlations of the relevant texts, the two compound words, sammaa and micchaa had been dropped. This could be due to an error in translation or the translators misunderstanding the Dhamma. Just to underscore this point the standard definition of sammaadi.t.thi is knowledge of the four noble truths. "dukkhe ~naa.na.m, dukkha samudaye ~naa.na.m ..." So sammaadi.t.thi is knowledge, while micchaadi.t.thi is belief or faith. Dhamma has nothing to do with belief or faith; it is a path of knowledge from beginning to end.


D. G. D. C. Wijeratna




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