I don’t know. They said they can type up long explanations of spiritual teachings that explain it.
I mean to be honest the biggest headache to me is that the main teaching in Buddhism or Hinduism is that this world isn’t rea/is an illusion/ a dream/ doesn’t exist and that consciousness is all there is.
It is a steaming pile of horseshit. Ignore it. 50,000,000 Elvis fans can be wrong.
It does not say that, anywhere in the article. **
Just to be clear to everyone else getting involved in this pointless discussion with you, who may not have followed the link, and thought you were actually quoting something it said: the words “rock” and “river” do not even occur, anywhere in the article.
Just to be safe, I checked the words “stone”, “pebble” and “stream” ,on the assumption **Machinaforce **also doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “quote”. They don’t occur, either. There is a reference to “mountains” and “waters”, but I’ve already shown above where Machinaforce selectively interpreted there, and left out the actual conclusion that author arrives at, which is the exact opposite of “mountains and water don’t exist”.
I’ll try to let it go. Try to not listen to the fear.
Because from my personal view, and not the fear, these spiritual teachings they use as proof seem more like anecdotes and not real data. Someone cited a Course in Miracles, which made be scratch my head.
But I’ll try. But the fear is hard to move past.
I feel you bro. Fear is indeed the mind-killer. :rolleyes:
Homer Simpson said alcohol was the mind-killer.
Which is it then?
Is it also a lie to say that “reality IS illusion”?
Things do exist. We know that, because things outside consciousness impact us and we can’t control them.
Sure, images exist in our minds, and they correspond to external realities to a greater or lesser degree, and the images aren’t the same thing as reality. But the disparity doesn’t show that reality doesn’t exist.
Objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center, because gravity is not just a veil. That’s true whether anyone is conscious of it or not. That’s why stars shine - because gravity compresses large balls of hydrogen together hard enough to fuse into helium. And that happened long before you or I were aware of it. The light that hits the earth was emitted about eight minutes ago, and the photons took hundreds of thousands of years to work their way from the sun’s core to the outside. All that happened before anyone was aware of it.
When the tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, it does make a sound.
Regards,
Shodan
Fear for sure. It’s hard to reason out of since you think there is logic to it based on how you feel. No matter how reasoned and well thought my argument is the fear doesn’t care. It’s not the first time my reasonable mind loses to fear. It’s a powerful primal emotion.
Jokes aside, my initial post in this thread, similar to my other posts in your threads, still applies – I hope you are seeking and getting the professional help you need to deal with these feelings and unhealthy thought patterns. You seem intelligent. Be a shame to waste an inquisitive mind like yours on pointless obsessive thoughts and fears.
Curiosity is a burden and interesting for me. It’s just that I get stuck on stuff that scares me like “this world is an illusion” or “nothing that changes or appears is real”. Not only does it make no sense at all to me but the fact that someone said or believes it drives me made because I want to know what they know.
The sad thing is that in the face of such “big” questions, nothing else matters (at least to my mind) because if this isn’t real or is an illusion then there’s no point in doing anything or learning anything about a false world.
I had a problem before with solipsism but got over it, yet now I read and see actual people saying it so this time it’s harder. It’s not like arguing for god, for some reason this is harder to ignore. It’s like I can’t enjoy anything without the thought interrupting my mind with (this isn’t real or “this world is an illusion”). It’s even beginning to feel like it is, but that’s more like my imagination
Machinaforce, Nava was right: the problem isn’t with Buddhism. It’s not even with pseudo-Buddhism. It’s within you. You’re seeing everything through this distorting filter your mind has created. Your inability to let go, your admitted fear and unhappiness are all you; therefore, you won’t find the answer in Buddhism or any pseudo-Buddhist site.
I’ve read and/or participated in some of your previous threads, and they’re all variations on this same theme. This has gone on long enough. If you can’t afford a therapist, many offer sliding payment scales. Some therapists have a background in Buddhism; I think that’d be ideal for you. And giving up on therapists because one was bad is like giving up on marriage because one blind date went sour.
Get help.
Someone said it, and so that drives you mad and gets you stuck? If I say I have a magic sword and therefore can tell you to stop obsessing over this stuff, can I thereby get a big fine thankful dose of full and unwavering focus from you?
Why not? If (a) everything you experience is, uh, “illusion” or “a false world”, and (b) you can get to some non-illusory real world where you’d totally get to live out some kind of decidedly different experiences, then, well, okay, I guess; but if all of this is all there is to experience, then calling it “illusion” or “a false world” doesn’t really mean anything, does it? If there’s no other reality, if this is the only reality there is, then isn’t this realm exactly as wonderful as the non-illusory real one you’d be pining for?
The Other Waldo Pepper has a point - the only reason to dismiss an “illusory” world is if the world is unstable and likely to end at any time. Consider the most common of illusory worlds: fiction. If any book you read had a high chance of suddenly turning blank you wouldn’t bother reading. If your television was prone to suddenly shutting off at any moment you wouldn’t watch TV. But this isn’t the case; the illusory worlds in question stick around long enough for you to get everything out of them that they have to offer, so it’s worth paying attention. Even though you know they’re all completely made up and full of lies, the experience is still fun and fulfilling and worth your time, because you know it’s going to last long enough for the experience to be worth it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but even in your contested understanding of the Buddhist model, the world isn’t getting any less real over time. However real it is now is how real it’s going to stay for the foreseeable future. Even if it actually is merely a giant virtual reality game, well, it’s one that you’ll be playing for years to come so you might as well play it. And it’s a massively multiplayer game too - so you might as well get to know the other players, and spend time with them if playing the game (that is, living life) is more fun when done together.
Again, to reiterate: Unreality is only a problem if it means reality might get yanked out from under you, rendering your time spent on it wasted. By all accounts getting outside of reality the Buddhist way isn’t something that’s going to happen by accident, so don’t worry about it! Play the game, earn lots of happiness points, avoid hunger, debt, and homelessness hazards, and just have fun!
You should get your life advice from things that people have said in 1980s sitcom theme songs.:
The world don’t move from the beat of just one drum–what might be right for you might not be right for some.
You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life.
According to our new arrival life is more than mere survival–we just might live the good life yet.
Don’t waste another minute on your cryin’.
They will tell you you can’t sleep alone in a strange place. Then they’ll tell you you can’t sleep with somebody else. But sooner or later you sleep in your own space. Either way it’s okay you wake up with yourself.
There’s a path you take and a path untaken the choice is up to you my friend.
These lyrics writers have no less insight into the nature of humanity than Buddhist scholars. So if something they say disturbs you, tell it “Yo, Holmes, smell you later!”.
Unfortunately someone tried that game analogy with me when I struggled briefly with solipsism but it only made things worse. Seeing it as a game just trivializes everything I do. It would still mean that I am living a lie as well. I guess that’s the part that gets me the most, that I am not correct and true and living a lie and all that I thought I knew wasn’t even right.
Well I can easily dismiss a magic sword because there is no such thing. As for the nature of reality…
Look, if all that exists is in your consciousness, then those Buddhists and their teachings that you have been listenung to are not real. They are all in your imagination. And having an imagination is wrong, so stop imagining up Buddhism. Also, you are imagining this message board.
Maybe you need to try another religion (a quick shudder at the thought of trying religion, but it is not a permanent commitment). The other posts have explained very well what Buddhism is, maybe your version of it is incomplete. Or you are going through the Buddhist version of the dark night of the soul, which is part of all religions.
I get the feeling that you are looking for a religion of some kind, and that’s fine by me and everybody else. Perhaps you need to analyze what you are looking for? And, these days religion is increasingly becoming synhretic and not bound to any open version of a particular religion, or or indeed, of any one religion.
Please elaborate: how can you so easily dismiss a magic sword? Because, see, you explained that your problem with stuff like “this world is an illusion” or “nothing that changes or appears is real” is just — as you put it — the fact that someone said it, which drives you mad. So how can you dismiss stuff like “magic swords are real” given, once again, the fact that someone said it?
Just lay out for me how you manage to get this right on some occasions, and maybe that’ll help you figure out how to can get it right on other occasions.
Uh, yes? “As for the nature of reality”, dot dot dot, what?
Here I am, in a world of appearances — where there seem to be walls that it seems I can’t ghost through, but there seem to be doors and I seem able to open them; and that seems to prove useful when I seem to feel hunger, because I seem to make my way to what seems to be food, and it seems to taste delicious sure as it seems to work on what seems to be pain in my belly — and if someone told me all of that was an illusion, then, dot dot dot, what?
Will that info let me ghost through the walls, which aren’t really there? Will I learn of real doors I can really open, possibly to get real food that’ll really taste delicious? Or will I not really need food then, as I’ll know the seeming pain in my belly isn’t real? What do you think really happens if all of our experiences here are, for the sake of argument, revealed to be illusory appearances?