illusion

On reality…
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On reality…

“Such ones do not take anything seen, heard, or thought to be ultimately true or false. But others get attached, thinking it is the truth, limited by their preconceptions.” Buddha Shakyamuni, Angutarra Nikaya

i. What does this mean to me?

This is a direct quote from the historical Buddha. What did he mean by “such ones”? The Buddha is referring to those who, like him, are enlightened. We call these enlightened ones ‘Buddhas’, which simply means those who are awake.

If we look carefully at the scripture, it’s saying that enlightened ones or ‘Buddhas’ don’t take anything they see, hear, or even think “to be ultimately true or false.” Why not? All that we see, hear or think are internal mental representations. We can understand this by considering how we interact with the known world. There’s no question that we can’t physically fit a dining room table into our head. Even if it’s from a dollhouse, it still won’t fit.

But yet, we know what a dining room table is. How do we know that? Because we’ve seen countless dining room tables. This being the case, we’ve created a mental image and labeled it ‘dining room table’. The same is true of any phenomenon. If you think about windchimes in a mild breeze, you’d hear the sound of windchimes, right?

But is the sound really there at that moment? No. The sound itself is an internal mental representation. With thoughts, it’s a lot easier to understand this. The only interactions we ever have with our thoughts are as internal mental representations. After all, we can’t take a thought out of our head and hold it in the palm of our hand, can we?

If we look back at the verse, this is what the Buddha is saying. Buddhas (those who are awake) understand that all their experience is internal mental representations. This is why Buddhas don’t take anything in their experience to be “ultimately true or false.”

Buddhists are not nihilists. We know there is an external ultimate truth. But due to the limitations of our mind and bodies, we can’t know what it is. Those who are enlightened understand that the internal mental representations we experience are nothing but ideas about what ultimate reality might be. Based on our everyday experience, we can’t say whether or not our internal mental representations reflect some truth about ultimate reality.

The Buddha goes on to say that “others” (those who have not yet realized their own enlightenment) “get attached, thinking it is the truth, limited by their preconceptions.” All that stops us from realizing our enlightenment are our preconceptions, namely wrong views and afflicted emotions. If, the Buddha is saying, we can resolve just these two things, we will realize the truth of our own enlightenment.

ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

I’d start by asking them to describe a dining room table. If they describe a rectangular table, I’d ask if a dining room table could be round. Of course, the answer is yes. Now there’s a dilemma. Which table is the ‘real’ dining room table? Is it the round one or the rectangular one? This is kind of a trick question. The answer is that neither is the ‘real’ table. We know there is an ultimate truth that ‘dining room table’ refers to, but we don’t know what that ultimate truth is.

The Buddha says that “…others get attached thinking it is the truth, limited by their preconceptions.” In the world as we experience it, there is entropy. Things fall apart. Even people fall apart. The Buddha taught that there are four signs of ultimately reality: true purity, true bliss, true permanence, and true being. I like to add a fifth one to help me understand, “no retrogression”. Ultimate reality is not subject to entropy.

Because entropy is our only experience with ‘reality’, we become attached to this point of view and take it to be the truth of how things are. But ultimate reality is not subject to anything in samsara. In fact we could argue whether or not ultimate reality is part of samsara. It’s not. Samsara is a realm of illusion. Ultimate reality is . . . well . . . real.

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

Samsara gets so much airtime in the mind. It surrounds, inundates and penetrates the mind until through sheer repetition, we believe it to be true.

This is why it’s so important to recite prayer or mantra whenever we can, wherever we can. I have a wonderful new practice (new to me) that helps a great deal. It’s called Ten by Ten. It means ten times a day pause to take ten slow deep breaths. For me, I recite “Ohm” with each in-breath.

I find this helpful because it ‘pokes holes’ in the false reality of samsara. For a few moments at a time, I can focus on just my breath, just rest in the empty luminosity of the mind. And in those fleeting moments I see through the illusion of samsara, a few seconds at a time.

And really, that’s all it takes. Enlightenment is easy. If we can, for any length of time escape the illusion of solidity that samsara imposes, we can see through the illusory quality of samsara. And with this clear seeing, we can experience our true enlightened selves, our own Buddha Nature, if only for a few moments.

On vanity . . .
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On vanity . . .

All notions of subject and object, self and selves, phenomena and characteristics are mere transformations of consciousness.

By this truth may I know that all appearances are vanity.

i. What does this mean to me?

I’m not sure what I expect from our prayers when I sit down to write a contemplation. At first I thought the simplicity of the words hid some grand esoteric, deeply philosophical truth. But no. I find that the prayers form mostly a “How To” guide for living in samsara without becoming lost in the illusion.

The line of the prayer before this one tells us that all we see and experience is “mere transformation of consciousness only.” Last time we talked about how there are two kinds of truth when watching a magic show. There’s the ‘truth’ that your eyes see. And there’s the underlying process of what the magician is actually doing.

Well, that’s nice to know, we might think, but – so what? Of course there’s no such thing as magic. We all know that. And with something as obvious as a magic show, it’s easy to understand that no one is really being sawed in half. Not so in samsara.

This line of our prayer reminds us of the nature of samsara. Our local friendly AI tells us that one of the meanings of vanity is “the quality of being worthless or futile.” Samsara is a realm of struggle and desire. We desire something, we get it, we move on to wanting something else, and then we go struggle until we get it. That cycle is exhausting and it’s only halted by death.

So what is our prayer telling us about living in samsara? It’s telling us that the appearances we experience do not have the qualities we assign to them. Another way to say appearance is to talk about the “outward form” of something.

This takes us back to the magic show. The appearance is magic. But magic in and of itself  is a worthless understanding of how things are. We know the magician is doing something, but we don’t know what he’s actually doing.

In the same way, samsara is all appearance. This is not to say that we dream reality into existence. Rather it’s to point out that what we experience in samsara is merely the outer form. Like the magic show, there is an underlying truth, but in our limited minds and bodies, we don’t have access to that Absolute Truth.

ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

I’d start by saying ‘the devil is in the details’. The line of the prayer before this one tells us that all we experience is mere transformation of consciousness. That is to say there is an underlying truth in samsara, but our experiences in samsara arise in the mind.

Once we accept this as true, then it becomes fairly obvious that all the appearances we experience couldn’t possibly live up to the qualities we assign to them. If I have two clear glasses, and I fill one with green liquid and the other with blue liquid, are the glasses themselves now green and blue? No. But the appearance is that we now have two different color glasses. Is it wrong to assign the glasses the colors of blue and green? Not exactly. But it’s futile to proceed as if the glasses are now green and blue. That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of what is.

In samsara, we do this all the time with just about everything. We absolutely and unquestionably believe that there are two glasses of different color. To the degree that we live our lives believing in fundamental untruths, we suffer. The source of our suffering comes from trying to work with or shift a ‘reality’ that we believe. In this realm of struggle and desire, there is no satisfaction, no peace, no end to suffering. The Dharma teaches us that the glasses are clear and furthermore, the glasses themselves are merely the outward form that arises in the mind of some Absolute Truth.

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

Before I began studying the Dharma, no matter what I did, there was this horrible feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction in my life. Materially, I was fine, but I couldn’t escape those feelings. Only when I began studying the Dharma did those feelings subside. Once I began to understand about the illusory qualities of samsara, I no longer desperately searched for ‘happiness’ in samsara.

I try to remind myself of this prayer when samsara starts getting to me. ‘No,’ I say to myself, ‘what I’m experiencing right now is not what it appears to be.’ My job can be very frustrating at times because I feel like I’m not getting enough stuff done that has to be done. Then I take a step back, breathe and remind myself that there is no point in fighting against how things are. My experience of reality, I remind myself is exactly that, an experience. This helps me to refocus my attention on what is, rather than what I want it to be.

This can be very liberating. There is simply no amount of emails that I can answer that will be satisfying. Not in samsara. This is where the Dharma and our prayers become important guides to living in samsara. The more we realize that nothing in samsara is substantial, or permanent or independent, the more we free ourselves of the pangs of living in samsara.

With this prayer reminding us that “all appearances are vanity”, we have the freedom to rely on our own Buddha Nature. It is complete and whole, nothing missing, nothing to add. In this way, we can live in samsara with compassion, wisdom and open hearts.