A student asked: since sharing the same views makes conversation easy and free of conflict, is there a way to help the people around us — in family and in society — come to share our views?

Views can only align when people abide within the same system

He explained that views can only align when people abide within the same system. Whoever possesses the mind as house-owner at any given moment overlays their own mental factors onto it, and each person's thoughts and feelings follow accordingly. What matters most is molding people into abiding within the same wholesome system. When we cultivate right mindfulness, noting body, feeling, mind, and mental states, we come to recognize who currently possesses the mind — if the mood is pleasant and happy, the wholesome has taken hold; if it feels pressured and uncomfortable, the unwholesome is house-owner. In that case, it's not yet the time to talk, or it turns into pointless quarreling that troubles both sides. We need to mold the people in our family to understand this, so they can abide within the wholesome system — and when either side notices the unwholesome has taken hold, they can remind each other. Without that understanding, though, no reminder is possible, and it ends in argument instead.

Molding through the threefold training, starting with virtue leading toward purity

Molding people requires the threefold training: training in virtue, training in concentration, and training in wisdom. Starting with virtue: understand that the normalcy of the wholesome is the normalcy of a good person — living happily through right thought, speech, and action, refraining from the three kinds of wrongdoing: not killing, not stealing, not committing sexual misconduct, not lying, not drinking intoxicants. This is called wholesome virtue. Unwholesome virtue, by contrast, is the normalcy of bad thought, speech, and action; neutral virtue is the normalcy of neither good nor bad, simply spending old merit day after day, indulging in amusement without creating any new cause. Our ability to sustain a happy human existence depends on merit; reaching a heavenly realm, the Brahma realm, or the path, fruit, and Nibbana likewise depends on merit and the ten perfections driving us to cultivate goodness through virtue, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge and vision of liberation across every body — from the human body, the subtle human body, the divine body, the Brahma body, the formless Brahma body, all the way to the Dhamma bodies of the lineage-entrant, stream-enterer, once-returner, non-returner, and arahant.

Virtue provides safety for ourselves and others; without it, safety is difficult to achieve, because the unwholesome guides us through greed, aversion, and delusion, all of which harm ourselves and others. Virtue reminds us and warns us against wrongdoing. As the proportion of wholesomeness grows, we become able to keep the eight precepts, which protect us from both the unwholesome and the neutral.

Concentration elevates the mind; wisdom lets us see danger and suffering clearly enough to be freed

Virtue protects us from wrongdoing in body and speech; concentration protects us from bad thoughts and moods, by setting our awareness to draw merit in, purifying the mind and clearing the impurity that causes turmoil. Practicing concentration daily to purify the impurity accumulated from each day's activities elevates the mind, freeing it from one dimension into another, reaching the knowing presence within, which then guides us toward external sources of knowledge — books on the Dhamma, for instance — bringing us to knowledge gained from learning, from reasoning, and from meditation. This teaches us to understand correctly what constitutes danger and suffering. Once we see the danger in gambling, killing, stealing, lying, drinking, or nightlife, our desire for these things fades away, and the sphere of liberation — already present within every one of us — can free us. Once freed from a bad way of living, and wishing for a more excellent life, the sphere of the knowledge and vision of liberation leads us toward that better life.

Knowledge alone isn't enough — it must come with happiness and purity together for genuine peaceful happiness

What matters most in life is purity. As long as we believe knowledge alone leads to happiness — sending children to school purely for knowledge, for instance — without purity, that happiness becomes an excited, thrilling kind of happiness, letting the unwholesome and the neutral guide us further and further astray. But when knowledge, happiness, and purity go together, the result is peaceful happiness — peace, seclusion, dispassion, liberation, purity, and Nibbana — the higher happiness of the wholesome side, free of excitement and agitation. Virtue, then, must be virtue that leads toward purity; concentration must be right concentration leading toward purity, not wrong concentration with the unwholesome behind it, driving actions that draw in demerit. And wisdom, if not aimed at purity, cannot solve problems correctly, nor lead toward the qualities of wisdom, purity, and great compassion that belong to the Buddha.

The Triple Gem oversees the wholesome system. Whenever we abide on the path of knowledge together with happiness and purity, the wholesome establishes itself, and the Triple Gem manifests brightly within us, bringing pure energy — merit — along with refined treasures and patterns of accomplishment to clear away impurity, easing problems and obstacles until we're freed from a coarser dimension into a better, more excellent one. Aligning our views with others, then, depends on molding through virtue, concentration, and wisdom, aimed at that same shared destination: knowledge together with happiness and purity — never knowledge without purity, because purity itself cannot be seen with the naked eye. It has to be studied through virtue, concentration, and wisdom, and put into practice, before its true taste can be known.