Reality and Permanence

Buddhists define reality as only that which remains. Anything that appears and then disappears is impermanent, and therefore, this is not reality. This means that everything we see, touch, hear, and experience is only an illusion, much like a dream upon awakening. The dream may have been intense and felt real, but upon awakening is only an illusion. Awakening is reality, until then we are only dreaming.

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to see what is beyond our stories and all of the illusions that our minds, individually and collectively, create. Awakening means that we can see that we have always been awake, but our views have been clouded by our thoughts.

To say that being awake is a state would imply that there is a separation between you and being awake. I am saying that you are already awake, whether you are aware of this or not.

Once aware, all is awake! Every person and everything! All is awake! All is enlightened!

Does that answer your question?

:D




Welcome to DU! :hi:

I'm not hostile toward your philosophy, but really want to know. All physical reality passes. The universe ages. Our sun blows up and Earth is destroyed. Before that, ice ages and/or nuclear wars happen, ending human culture.

So since nothing is permanent, what's the point of making the distinction?

All physical things eventually come and go, and therefore not real. Continents have shifted, ice ages have come and gone, and you're right, even the sun will engulf the entire solar system before dying out.

What I am saying is that there is something that is permanent beyond all of that, beyond what simply meets the eye and touches the skin. Awakening to that awareness is the realization of that.

So, the question I ask you is that if everything that we "know" comes and goes, what remains? What is here, has been here, and will always be here?

"Last night Chuang-tsu dreamed he was a butterfly. Or, was it a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang-tsu?"

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For amongst these winters is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly to rise
in the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, amongst the momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be-and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, just this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, to all the muffled and dumb
creatures of the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

R.M. Rilke

Hare Krsna! Hare Rama!