Abiding in the Illusory Life

Teaching 1

Because we haven’t blamed self-grasping for our mental suffering, we abide with it. We become comfortable in our misery. We have to:

• have the confidence to completely let go of the way we have understood ourselves.
• open our mind to a completely different way of perceiving
• understand we have beaten and abused by our own ignorance So far we have been externalising our pain. This is an ignorant view of the situation

Although things appear, they do not exist. Although things do not exist, they appear.

Our training is to abide in illusion-like appearance. All phenomena are like illusions. We understand how powerful illusions are - e.g. magic, TV, dreams, drugs

We are in the extreme of existence - believing everything exists as it appears. We see things and we believe them to be there. And we try to avoid what we don’t like, and get what we like.

Form is emptiness

What we see isn’t really there - it just appears to be there. Need to recognise that when we try to find them, they’re not there. Get rid of every thing that is not the thing But the parts are not the thing. There isn’t a thing separate from its parts. At what point does it stop being the thing? You cannot find a definite point. It is just appearance. We think there is more to it than just appearance, but there isn’t. Although it appears, it does not exist. What am I? Just an appearance. If there was 1 fixed being, that is “me”, everyone would see it in the same way. We have to start recognising illusion-like appearance

The real nature of things are empty-like space

Need the mechanism to help us relate to illusion-like appearance. Although it does not exist, it appears. E.g. gold coin - gold is the substance, coin is what we impute on it. In the same way, emptiness is the substance, what we see is imputation E.g. blue sky - we know that the sky is empty-like space, but you can never find the blue. The blue is an illusion.

The appearance of the I is illusory. We have related our entire life to something that has never been. We are wasting our life relating to things with ignorance.

Teaching 2

Things arise in dependence on their necessary causes and conditions. Therefore they can’t be self-existent / independent. They lack inherent existence. E.g. rainbow, clouds, all phenomena Subtle impermanence - everything changes from moment to moment. Nothing exists for a 2nd moment. Everything arises and then ceases. There is no such thing as a steady permanent state.