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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
The samsara is the sense of self. I've had past experiences. I'm aware of the moment. I will have future experiences.
None of this exists. All important decisions in the universe occur someplace else.
Illusions are shadows moving endlessly across the ground. The shadows are quite real but they're shadows. They have very little substance.
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.
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.
At this point you are so far away from what you really are, it's ridiculous.
You can stay in the safe, secure oblivion and pain of ignorance, not knowing, and just die. You'll just die, like everyone else, and shuffle into another incarnation that won't be very different.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Everything is perception. A hallucination is a perception of a certain reality. It is a perception of a certain state of mind.
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.
Do not feel that you are destined to enlightenment in this life. You have no idea. This is an illusion of selfhood. It's gross ignorance and egotism.
If you attain liberation do not feel that it matters or it is important. You had nothing to do with it. If you are bound by ignorance do not feel bad. You had nothing to do with it.
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
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.
