Right view, the first limb of the Eightfold Path, points to the innermost orientation of the heart: how I understand the world. If I see the world through right view, I see what causes suffering and what doesn’t. I start to understand what helps and what hurts; what leads to liberation or further into confusion and pain. As wise view matures, it grows into this beautiful softening of the sense of separation between myself and others. Then moment to moment, seeing clearly what’s happening, and who’s here, all I want to know is “given the choices available to me in this moment, what’s going to help the most?”
![Sean Oakes](https://www.spiritrock.org/uploads/team-photos/teachers/_600x750_crop_center-center_none/Spirit-Rock-Teacher-Sean-Oakes.jpg)
Sean Oakes
Guest Teacher/Movement Teacher
Sean Oakes, PhD, teaches Buddhism and Yoga focusing on the integration of meditation, trauma resolution, and social justice. He received teaching authorization from Jack Kornfield, and wrote his dissertation on extraordinary meditative states. His current research explores identity, ancestry, and rebirth, and working with the body in contemplative inquiry.