To quote Chuang Tzu one of the foremost Chinese philosopher, “I dreamt I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?”, profoundly expresses one of the ways of how the human mind should deal with the transient nature of all things.
Here's another popular anecdote. Let's say you are asleep and dreamt that you are a rich man surrounded by extensive material wealth. Suddenly, someone appears in the same dream to say that you are neither rich nor wealthy and that you are merely dreaming. You will immediately disagree and will not hesitate to point out that all the wealth around you is tangible and therefore very real. But when you awake, you realize that it was just a dream. So, as Chuang Tzu says it makes one wonder whether we are really a human being going through this life, or something else dreaming of what we are now.
So, isn’t everything based on the mind's perception? One may argue in great length that if we can see and touch something, it is real. But it is the mind that does it and it depends on the five body senses to gather data, interpret, compute, store and use them as references to process new incoming data in a continuous process. Therefore, anything that our senses can detect whether tangible (material) or intangible (ethereal) and accept as real, depends on the mind.
Then again, I'm always asked, “Why is there so many types of ghost, and why does a Chinese ghost differ from an European ghost, a Malay or an Indian ghost?” Obviously they're all different, because your mind says so. It depends on the data (image) in your mind of what ghosts look like. A Chinese would have several versions including one dressed in courtly Mandarin attire and goes around hopping on both feet and a European would have others including vampires and werewolves etc…. So, when somebody shouts “Ghost” in the dark, a Chinese could expect a hopping Mandarin, and a European, a vampire or werewolf, or in general some fiction horror movie image.
Another proposition, can you describe a color that doesn't exist (or you've not seen)? Technically, you can't, because it's not in your mind's data-bank. The moment you can (e.g. by mixing the colors you know), the color then exists, at least in your mind to be described – a paradox!
What then am I trying to say? Here, I'd like to quote part of Mr. Ng’s comment on my post 'On Karma', “… someday it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It does not matter what you owned or what you owe.”
Now, that's the real picture ... which lies beyond the mind.
1 comment:
In Diamond Sutra, Buddha says all phenomena in this world are illusionary, they are like morning dews; they are like the moon in the pond; they are like the flowers in the mirror. They are all created in the mind.
Most people’s lives are cluttered up with things: material things, things to do, things to think about. Their lives are like the history of humanity, which Winston Churchill defined as “one damn thing after another.” Their minds are filled up with the clutter of thoughts, one thought after another, this is the dimension of object consciousness that is many people’s predominant reality, and that is why their lives are so out of balance. Object consciousness needs to be balanced by space consciousness for sanity to return to our planet and for humanity to fulfill its destiny.
In addition to being conscious of things – which always comes down to sense perceptions, thoughts, and emotions – there is an undercurrent of awareness. Awareness implies that you are not only conscious of things (objects), but you are also conscious of being conscious. If you can sense an alert inner stillness in the background while things happen in the fore ground – that’s it! This dimension is there in everyone, but most people are completely unaware of it.
This consciousness represents not only freedom from ego, but also from dependency on the things of this world, from materialism and materiality. It is the spiritual dimension which alone can give transcendent and true meaning to this world.
When you are no longer totally identified with forms, consciousness – who you are – becomes freed from its imprisonment in form. This freedom is the arising of inner space. It comes as a stillness, a subtle peace deep within you, even in the face of something seemingly bad. Suddenly, there is space around the event. There is also space around the emotional highs and lows, even around pain. And above all, there is space between your thoughts. And from that space emanates a peace that is not “of this world,” because this world is form, and the peace is space. This is the peace of Enlightenment.
[Reference: Diamond Sutra and Works by Eckhart Tolle]
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