Edgar,
Whichever personality I'm posting with now thinks you've just
restated in a more physically-orented way what I posted before.
First there is a mountain,
(Illusions are seen as reality)
Then there is no mountain,
(Illusions are seen as illusions)
There there is.
(Illusions are accomodated and treated as reality, but are known to
be illusions)
Now that the postings have begun again I'm going back to lurking.
...Bill!
--- In Zen_Forum@yahoogroups.com, Edgar Owen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Bill,
>
> Your conclusion sounds more like multiple personality disorder to
> me! :-)
>
>
> One needs to understand the meaning of the word 'illusion'.
Illusion
> in the Zen sense doesn't mean what is experienced isn't really
there,
> it means that what is experienced is not actually as it is
experienced.
>
> Illusion consists of many many veils of illusion each covering
> another. E.g. we experience the world of matter as solid. That
> apparent solidity is an illusion since we know that atoms are
> actually almost entirely areas of empty space containing
vibrational
> energies. That is one veil of illusion drawn back. We also know
that
> the actual visual world looks nothing at all like we see it, and
we
> see only the model of the world that our mind constructs. Another
> veil. Even worse, we know that the whole idea of ourself as
> experiencer and the world as what is experienced is entirely a
> construction of the mind of that very mental construction! Another
> couple of veils. There are innumerable other veils which I won't
go
> into now, but each understood reveals one more reason to
understand
> that the world is not at all as we experience it.
>
> So that is the sense that the world is illusion, not that it
doesn't
> exist, but that it is not actually as we experience it.
>
> But where does that leave us? Well, some illusions can be
understood
> and dropped, mainly the top level veils associated with desires
and
> attachments and ignorance of what science tells us about the
nature
> of reality. But most of the veils cannot be dropped because they
are
> part of who we are as human beings, part of our biological and
> physical nature. E.g. we can intellectually understand the quantum
> world but we can never experience it because we are classical
world
> macroscopic beings.
>
> Thus the third stage. All that exists, what experience is, is the
> same old world we started out with, the world we now know is
> illusory. So the best we can do is to accept the world of forms as
it
> is, but to realize it is illusion. The mountain is a mountain
again,
> an illusory mountain, but the illusory mountain is what is real....
>
> Thus the causal rules which appear to govern the world of illusion
> are what is real. We live only in the world of forms so we are
> subject to those rules. That is daily life....
>
> Except in deep meditation when thoughts about such things
vanish....
> Then, Just this!
>
> Knowing the true nature of things, that the only reality is
illusion.
>
> Edgar
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