Hello and welcome back to another episode of the secular Buddhism podcast. This is episode number 154

I am your host Noah Rosheta. Today I'm going to talk about taking the long view

Keep in mind you don't need to use what you learned from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use what you learn from Buddhism to just be a better

whatever you already are. If you're interested in learning more about Buddhism, you can check out my book

known nonsense Buddhism for beginners it's available on Amazon. We can also start out with the first five episodes of this podcast

You can find those easily by visiting secular Buddhism.com and clicking on the start here link

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consider becoming a patron by visiting secular Buddhism.com and clicking on the link to join our community. So as we jump into the topic for this podcast episode

in the last podcast episode I talked about the beauty of not knowing and I talked about how the

extinguishing of the question can bring about a stronger sense of peace and contentment than any answer could ever provide.

Today I want to follow up on those thoughts a little bit by discussing two additional concepts that I think play well into this overall strategy or practice of

learning to take the long view. So the concept of taking the long view is a concept that is very common in Buddhism

and I encountered this when I was studying with Reverend Koyoku, say in the lay ministry program that I did. He introduced me to a word Japanese word called Takan

and Takan is a word that means seeing things through philosophical eyes or with a bigger perspective.

This is something that I experience and all of you would experience anytime you're up really high whether you go on a hike to the top of a very tall hill or a mountain or anytime you fly in an airplane and you look out the window and you look down.

This is something I experience every time I go paragliding. I can look down and I can see things from a higher perspective.

I remember on one occasion when I was young and we were moving our neighbors were moving and my mom and her friend, the neighbor who was moving we're talking and my mom said we're all like little ants going about our daily lives.

I remember that stuck with me when we're at ground level it's easy to get caught up in the thick of thin things and our view becomes more narrow and near sighted because we can't really see the bigger picture.

I think for most of us that's the perspective we have as we go through life it's a very narrow view and in this narrow view we get caught up in the world of I and me my feelings my opinions my emotions and Takan means to take the long view of things that is to view the world with philosophic eyes or zoomed out.

A wide view means that other people count just as much as we do their needs are just as important as ours and I think that dualistic thinking such as I am right or you are wrong that only polarizes the problem and it intensifies conflict.

In fact another neat acronym I learned from Koyo was war WAR and that it's an acronym for we are right and I think any time we get caught up in this thinking of we are right war is what ensues the moment that we're confronted with another perspective that also happens to have the same we are right attitude.

So this notion of zooming out anytime again if you were ever traveling in an airplane and you're looking out the window when you look down and you see the little cars on the road or you see all the houses that you're flying over or even higher and you see cities and towns it's very easy to not get caught up in whatever the thing is it's taking place down there right now.

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