What Cannot Be Taught, Must Be Tasted

Can you really describe an orange?

Photo by Philippe Gauthier on Unsplash

In Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Path includes the Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

But can any of those really be taught?

Or do we have to experience it ourselves?

It helps to learn what someone as enlightened as the Buddha would describe as Right View, Right Thinking, and so on.

Unfortunately, reading words on a page won’t help us fully understand what it feels like to live with the path.

It’s like telling your kids to stop jumping down the staircase because they’ll hurt themselves. They need to jump one step too far and feel the hurt for that message to sink in.

It’s like describing love to someone who has never felt the crashing emotion bring them to their knees and wash away all logic and reason.

It’s like explaining the taste of an orange with words alone. It can’t be done.

“Sometimes we see our children doing things that we know will cause them to suffer in the future, but when we try to tell them, they won’t listen. All we can do is to stimulate the seeds of Right View in them, and then later, in a difficult…