Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
What kind of a virtual world we are living in
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
after understanding some phenomena through theoretical understanding, it seems that the world we live in is not really as it seems.
sound does not exist - we speak and think that we generate sound through our mouth, but sound is realized through our ear and that too just air disturbance vibrating the ear-drums and then consciousness creating the magic of words we listen.
colour does not exist - there is nothing red or green outside - but light of a different wavelength, but when this image reaches our brain, then consciousness creates the magic of colours.
we touch other objects - but at the atomic level there is only electrons in the outer orbit getting repelled by the electrons of the external objects - so nothing touches in reality but our consciousness creates the magic of sensation of touching.
we feel matter as solid - but at its root level, it is mostly empty space with some vibrations in it - so solidness in reality does not seem to exist.
the biggest delusion is 'I' - till we live we create our world around this concept of 'I' and think our whole world will collapse if we are not there and always get caught up in stories about what I said, heard, felt, did to others - but suddenly at death 'I' is gone and whatever we said, heard, felt, did with this 'I' is over for ever.
So all these lead me to think what kind of a virtual world we are living in. Any views, please.
sound does not exist - we speak and think that we generate sound through our mouth, but sound is realized through our ear and that too just air disturbance vibrating the ear-drums and then consciousness creating the magic of words we listen.
colour does not exist - there is nothing red or green outside - but light of a different wavelength, but when this image reaches our brain, then consciousness creates the magic of colours.
we touch other objects - but at the atomic level there is only electrons in the outer orbit getting repelled by the electrons of the external objects - so nothing touches in reality but our consciousness creates the magic of sensation of touching.
we feel matter as solid - but at its root level, it is mostly empty space with some vibrations in it - so solidness in reality does not seem to exist.
the biggest delusion is 'I' - till we live we create our world around this concept of 'I' and think our whole world will collapse if we are not there and always get caught up in stories about what I said, heard, felt, did to others - but suddenly at death 'I' is gone and whatever we said, heard, felt, did with this 'I' is over for ever.
So all these lead me to think what kind of a virtual world we are living in. Any views, please.
0
Comments
i think virtual means non-real.
It is 'non-real'
it is 'real' also.
Maybe there are profound differences, but I cannot make sense of them. In this world, in these lives, there is still connection, joy, suffering and all that jazz.
These are fascinating things to ponder, but to my mind, they are ultimately imponderable.
It's only when you don't accept, or realise, that you have a problem.
Ordinary life... day to day responsibilities and living.. is the "real" that counts.. I think when we start to say it is "only a dream" and so forth.. we are drifting into dissociation .
Colours don't exist? How can it be I'm seeing them?
You can't experience something that doesn't exist.
Sounds and colours and all that exist. Maybe not in the 'out there' world, but they do inside the mind. And the mind is at least just as real as the 'out there' world.
You say the world we live in, but all you experience is inside the body/mind, so maybe it is more accurate to say that the world lives in us..
So than what's going to tell you they actually exist? As sort of said, you can only see them in a theory. Any information about them exists only as an idea, not as an experience. But all the information you actually have comes through your senses, through sound and sight etc. Therefore the mind is more real than the theories we use to describe the 'outside world'.
And that's why Buddhism doesn't try to find out what is "out there", but what is "in here". It doesn't want to see if there an inherent existance in sound in the world, but if there is a listener or owner of the experience of sound. And that's something no theory is going to tell us, only a direct experience.
With metta,
Sabre
Can't put a finger on it. So smile and laugh.
Breaking things down to atom level and depriving things/circumstances/mind of meaning is like saying the dharma is a collection of ............. w o r d s.
Which leaves only ordinary "this"... like the old "tree in the courtyard" Zen. It leaves conventional stuff... just doing stuff... no fantasy.
it's very disappointing..
I like the notion (I wrote this many moons ago: http://goo.gl/S5UsO) but I don't think an answer either way is available.
Shalom.
Still gotta wipe your ass though. Life goes on.
But we have these sentimental attachments that kind of contradict these possibilities, in the trivial and the existential sense.
An "atom for atom" copy of my childhood teddy bear would simply not be the same for me as my actual childhood teddy bear. This seems similar to this world not being the same as an experientially identical world that is in some sense a designed simulation. I just don't think we could make sense of what that sense is, if that makes sense!:)
Namaste
samsara is not 'out there', rather samsara is inside our mind.
the problem is - the ultimate reality and conventional reality are mutually exclusive in experience. we or our mind can be either in ultimate reality view or in conventional reality view.
the root problem of ignorance is so deeply-rooted in our mind that the moment our mind thinks about something - a sense of individuality crops up immediately as 'I' am thinking, so this dilemma can never be resolved by thinking and analyzing. BUT while living in this world, we operate through our 5 senses which are guided by our mind - so it implies till we are operating in this world, this sense of 'I' can never be removed totally, only exception being the case of Buddha who had attained Nirvana but still wished to continue in this world to help others by teaching about how to end suffering and to attain liberation.
to add the complexity is the law of karma and law of this/that conditionality and dependent origination. who knows what amount of past bad/good karma's effect is still left to be beared and who knows how much more lifes one has to go through to end this cycle of samsara. who knows if the meditation is not peaceful and not leading to arising of the factors of the Path - may be it is due to past bad karma's effect whose effect comes into play to disturb our meditation. This is not to say that we should not try to end this cycle of samsara - we dont know what future has for us, but we can at least try to do meditation to experience the ultimate reality and to end this cycle of suffering.
i think because of this, the path leading to ending this cycle is through renunciation.
we live in a 'virtual' world....
and from that world we're going more and more into a virtual (digital) world as a species.
don't have an opinion or some statement about this.
just different than what we were lead to believe.
Realizing this difference and seeing the world as it really is leads to end of suffering btw.
cool coincidence.
it would suck if it were the other way around.
Read your article is like reading what Einstein thinking. haha. And i like what you say about "the biggest delusion is 'I'". It is remind me when i was 4 years old. My nanny ask to me : "Who are you?"
I can't answer that question. It is not enough when you just answer with "I am a human being"
That question is more than just it. It makes me wondering "Who am i? for what i was born in here?"
I became curious about myself. I became realized that i didn't know myself. The self that I used now. Until now, i really don't know who am i.
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
A Dream Within A Dream
Edgar Allan Poe
now somebody will say Self-Realization is not same as Nirvana as Buddha said there is no self, but Buddha did not commented whether there is any Self existing.
Even I am also not saying that Self-Realization is same as Nirvana - but what i am trying to say is that both these realizations are the realizations of ultimate reality and also have a common path to achieve it.
we can have a theoretical understanding of 'I' being just a label, but then the question arises - how does consciousness arises from something unconscious like matter or what is consciousness referred to as Buddhahood or plain Buddha consciousness referred in Tibetian Buddhism in the movie for the Tibetian Book of the Dead?
The only thing which is certain is that these things cannot be explained/understood through intellectual reasoning.
All these answers can only be understood by direct experience, as it is just not about question-answer but to practically realize the ultimate reality - then shall the objective of human birth be attained.
All these are based on my theoretical understanding as I have not experienced anything with direct experience till now and it seems the way things are going, I shall never be able to even come close to it, leave the question of experiencing it
Everybody has buddha nature, everybody can train letting go.
With metta,
Sabre
All these are based on my theoretical understanding and thinking, as I have not experienced anything with direct experience till now.
Not becoming negative, but don't know when i will learn to let go in my meditation and also in my life. But trying to do it, as you already are somewhat aware about it in my other thread about my mind keeps on chattering.
and I can see appreciate the interest in films like the The Matrix.
But experience when not analyzed is what it is. It is important to realize experience is empty and ungraspable.
There is no problem. Just appearances. Thoughts, feelings, ideas, emotions, and feedback.
There is no problem.
This doesn't make sense and even those philosophies (this is just my recollections from a bit of exposure).... even those philosophies teaching the two truths say that only a Buddha sees the two truths as unified.
Lord Longchenpa, I think, said that his mind was as vast as the sky but he respected karma like fine grains, I think that was the metaphor.
so we are natural part of experience - but we do not see things as they are, but we see things how we believe they are.
Read it somewhere and found it is agreeable - We don't believe what we see, rather we see what we believe.
@ourself : well thanks for raising these statements, as it lead me to think over it more. Though i know this thinking or not thinking does not help much, what matters is direct experience. But till we do not have direct experience, it is still somewhat good to try to know things as they are.
its strange see - yesterday i asked you how old are you and yesterday was your birthday. i hope you are not joking that your birthday was yesterday.
conventional truth has a problem that the frame of reference in which conventional truth is said has the assumption of 'I' at a very subtle or gross level, because of ignorance - leading to attachment and aversion - and hence not allowing us to see things as they are.
:eek2:
That there is no rock is just another story.
Because things are empty of a permanent self does not make them illusory. This chain of logic leads to nhilism as if there are no things, there is little point to compassion. Nhilism seems to be a natural obstacle we overcome as Buddhists.
Our true nature may be beyond these individuals but to negate the self is to negate everything. If we were to truely shed our "self" we would be no good to anybody. I think the idea iss to expand our limited notion of self to include all that is.
Have you read the poem by Thich Nhat Hanh "Call me by my true names"? It really hits this home for me.
Let me try to explain what i am trying to say - may be i am not able to express my view clearly.
I am not saying that there is nothing out there in the world and neither i am saying that nothing is existing. So i am not saying that it is total nihilism.
What i am saying is that things are there, but not the way we see them.
Now lets take your example to clarify the things - you say car is an obstacle as it can crush you. Now this is what a layperson will see/think - but it is not seeing the things as they are. this is not to say there is no car out there or you will not die if the car hits you badly, but the core problem is slightly subtle.
Now let me take you to what my theoretical understanding of Buddha's teachings say: you see an obstacle in car - first of all there is only a car and a you. now you think about you only as your body because you are attached to your body - if you say you are not attached to your body, then the worry of dying will not be there, so even if the car hits you and you die, then also you will see that it is not something to worry because the body is impermanent and its nature is to perish one day or the other, either by itself or by some external cause - so if something is impermanent, then your thought of keeping it as permanent and safe always, will always lead you to suffering. But when you see the things as they are, then you will see that your body is just an aggregation of earth, water, wind and fire and it is impermanent and it is not-self, So there is no 'you' to begin the story. It is only a matter (car) running over another matter(your body). The obstacle was not the car hitting you, the obstacle was that you do not want to die, or in other words, the obstacle was your clinging to the view of your body being your self and your clinging to keep your body as such with no change allowed to your body.
Hope now you would have got my view. The above is based on my theoretical understanding only, as till now i have not experienced anything with direct experience.