Ignorance
The things you see are real, but they are not a complete seeing -- Samsara.
At this point you are so far away from what you really are, it's ridiculous.
Everything goes through the cycle of birth, growth, maturation, decay and death. But all of this is an illusion. Everything we see is an illusion.
None of this has ever been or will ever be; all is an appearance, all is an illusion. Illusions are truth. All illusions are real. We say illusion, meaning that they're shadows.
Illusions are shadows moving endlessly across the ground. The shadows are quite real but they're shadows. They have very little substance.
All the manifest forms of existence are but illusions. They are momentary displays of consciousness, flashes of lightening in the sky. They are there for a moment and then they are gone.
We fall into states of illusion -- we forget all this. We get caught up in desires, frustrations, political movements, philosophies, religions, the getting of a living, the pain of a body, the pleasure of a body.
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Everything is perception. A hallucination is a perception of a certain reality. It is a perception of a certain state of mind.
Everything that you see here is a reflection of a higher reality. This particular world is not really a world, it's a perception that you are having at the moment.
None of this exists. All important decisions in the universe occur someplace else.
The samsara is the sense of self. I've had past experiences. I'm aware of the moment. I will have future experiences.
The idea of self is dependent upon attraction, aversion and memory. Memory is simply a serial account of attractions and aversions that don't exist now except in imagination.
Personality is a manifestation of ego. Ego is the central sense of separateness that a person has from the rest of the universe. Personality is the form that that separateness take.
Life isn't complicated. The reason it appears complicated to you is because you are in a very distorted state of mind. That's the basic premise of Buddhism -- that you're in a very distorted state of mind.
At the moment you're suffering from what we call Maya. Maya is illusion. Maya is a Sanskrit word that suggests that we have forgotten. We've forgotten the purpose of life.
There is illusion, the way you see things now, thinking that there is a tomorrow, there is a today, there is time and that there is life and death. Those are just appearances
I don't think you see your minds. I think you see your thoughts; you see your desires; you see your relatives, friends, lovers, enemies. I don't think you see your mind. You think of the mind as the clutter.
Even our perceptions of truth are illusory, illusory in the sense they're not complete.
Samsara is the world appearance, the cycle of rebirth, the physically manifest universes and states of mind that you perceive through the medium of ego.
This solidity is not true. The apparent solidity is the delusion of the senses and of the self. Everything is made up of infinite, intelligent light.
It is the mind that weaves the dream of life, convinces us that what we see is what is apparent and real, and that there's nothing else outside of our perception.
I can assure you, as a practitioner of Buddhism, that there are ten thousand states of mind, at least, give or take a few billion.
Whenever you are in a perceptual field, it seems like it's ultimate. It's a self-wrapping consciousness. There doesn't seem or appear to be anything else other than the attention field that you're in.
The burden you are carrying around is the burden of self. You seek release from that. You want to let it all go. You want to forget who you are and what you are. You wish to be the whole universe, infinite, endless.
You can be in a state of mind for a few seconds and forget that you were ever in any other state of mind. That's what we mean by illusion.
What gets frustrating for some people is the fact that you might get very high, but you find yourself pulled down again. There are forces of illusion or maya that cause us to make mistakes.
It's fun to go to a supermarket or a park or a shopping mall where human beings convene. They're so caught up in their own personal reality as to not see life, except in terms that add to or detract from their movie.
There's a different film being made in every mind. And of course, the star of the film is the mind, the personality, the self.
You're bound by the frame. You've become so engrossed in the movie of your life that you have forgotten that you're sitting there watching.
Things don't make you unhappy. People don't make you unhappy. You make yourself unhappy. Because you are in the cycle. You're stuck. You're stuck in time.
To suffer because of anything you see, feel or experience here in the world of moment to moment is a mistake. It is like becoming upset over a frightening dream.
The Samsara is the movement of life. And you, an individual self, a form, a moment on a wave, are bound.
You are separate from the universe, therefore you experience it.
As long as you exist, you are aware of the manifest universes through the senses, through feelings and through mind.
Reality is not the world as you perceive it. Reality is the world perceived through enlightenment. It's the same world; but it's not the same world.
Life is invisible. The illusion is what we are perceiving is in some way not a reflection of self. Life reflects the field of attention that we're in
The stars in the sky last for billions of years. That's nothing to the mind, nothing. It's an instant, a millisecond. The mind shines radiantly forever. But we don't see the shine because of the clutter.
Unlike the experience of nirvana, traveling to other dimensions will not take you beyond suffering, nor will it help you experience the limitless ecstasy of creation.
In the realm of the higher astral, it's just fun. We're on the honeymoon and we love each other so much that we can't keep our hands off each other and everything is wonderful. It doesn't last; it's a honeymoon.
Everyone is afraid of enlightenment, knowledge, completion. People are afraid of being exposed.
It's only illusions that destroy us. It's illusions that convince us that we can't. It's the illusions of the transient that tell us that all this matters.
You're standing in a closet, and you've been in it so long that you can't remember that there's anything else, that there's a huge house with lots of rooms and there are lands outside the house and planets and universes and creations.