Dharma Fantasy

lobster

Do you want the truth or would you prefer an acceptable, workable fantasy? Just checking.
For example, no need to hurry towards the cessation of dukkha, many lifetimes to live. Happier?
No need to rely on our efforts. Blessings, lamas and yidams from other dimensions will help us . . . Easier?
No need to be an adult. Fantasy Dharma available for children to be rocked to sleep with . . . Suffering is avoidable . . . Rock a bye baby . . .

What are we like? What do we like? What truth lies at the heart of dharma? . . . and back to sleep?
:facepalm:

BhikkhuJayasara

red pill or blue pill... your choice.

Gui

Do you want the truth or would you prefer an acceptable, workable fantasy?

The truth is before mind. So, when we ask this question, how are we to know the difference?

ZenBadger

If the truth is so horrible that it causes me to curl up in terror but the fantasy allows me enough hope to be able to practice something that will benefit me and the people around me then I will choose fantasy every time.

how

Dharma fantasy= another oxymoron.

The major difference between the worldly and the realized mind
is that the former see's fantasy as a viable escape from suffering
whereas the latter knows that fantasy eventually makes it worse..

lobster

If the truth is so horrible that it causes me to curl up in terror but the fantasy allows me enough hope to be able to practice something that will benefit me and the people around me then I will choose fantasy every time.

There is benefit?

“I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me, Superman!”
Homer Simpson

Florian

ZenBadger said:

If the truth is so horrible that it causes me to curl up in terror but the fantasy allows me enough hope to be able to practice something that will benefit me and the people around me then I will choose fantasy every time.

A pointless attitude, I would say, since you won't know the truth until you know it, by which time you will have lost the chance not to know it.

Nirvana

I don't know about the above post or the one it referred to, but I do think that ultimately we're all agnostic, "unknowing." I take this thread's topic as one intended by the OP as a window to tongue-in-cheek chatter. @lobster, am I wrong by a mile?

I agree with @ZenBadger about fantasy and hope. Hope is our main ally against being overwhelmed with the "too much reality" with which T.S. Eliot said humankind cannot cope. In other words, many things that aid our denial of cold, stark reality increase our chance of survival in this cruel world.

Well, in that spirit of something approaching spieltrieb, I'll have to disagree with our very own estimable @how. Dharma fantasy is not an oxymoron; although dharma should be sharp, fantasy is NEVER dull, IMNSHO. [wry smile]

Seriously, religious people and, yes, even followers of philosophies, are more than capable of fooling themselves. Sometimes the worst hoaxes are those we put over on ourselves. Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people, but I think the schemes we invest our beliefs in have religion beat.

lobster

@lobster, am I wrong by a mile?

It is a bit like an elephant in the room . . .
We all have our elephants: mind, conditioning, karma.
Some have a lobster in their head, some a monkey on their shoulder, some nirvana on the brain. Some sit on a coiled snake. Some are possesed by a touch of the Lamas.

The room however is empty. The elephant is a fantasy.
Whatever we put in the room is a construct. Even the room is just a space of empty imaginings.

how said:

Dharma fantasy= another oxymoron.

The major difference between the worldly and the realized mind
is that the former see's fantasy as a viable escape from suffering
whereas the latter knows that fantasy eventually makes it worse..

. . . ah the clear light . . . Time for a song . . .

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping in,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.

"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach out to you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whisper'd in the sounds of silence."
Simon and Garfunkel

Emptiness is form; form is emptiness?

Nirvana

Too ABSTRUSE 4 me. I wish a proper Zen master would come and give our beloved poet a slap on the wrist!

As always, with devotion, lobster,

Nirvana

lobster

I will be standing by, wrist at the ready, for the attention of the proper or improper . . . :clap: