The Illusion of Self?
(This is a bottom level post.)
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What if what the Buddha meant about the self being an illusion was that to think of ourselves as a self — a separate entity — is the illusion? We are not distinct selves? We are all part of the same entity? To think that we are distinct selves is delusion? We are complex and interdependent? Each of us? No. All of us? No. Everything? We=It? It=Everything? Therefore, We=Everything?
Wait, can you explain the equations for the mathematically challenged? There are different ways of understanding ideas.
Ok, so the equation uses the transitive property to posit that perhaps we are equal to everything because we are literally tied to a complex series of interdependent events and processes that recombines particles in novel ways as part of the expanding universe that is made up of us and we of it. Everything is part of a whole and connected to the whole by a web of webs of particles, energy, and consciousness. Everything refers to everything. And that is what I think the Buddha was suggesting that we are missing if we think of everything as separate selves. If we think of our selves as separate from each other, from everything.
Ok, that was hard to follow — all the particles and energy stuff. Can you put it another way?
Well, we may never get to the bottom of it. But we are a little bit of everything, when you think about it. We are a part of the universe. And doesn’t that word mean one-thing — the one thing that we are all a part of? That we are all because of? If it is true, then what does that mean practically for us? What do we do without an idea of self? Or how we do understand anything, when the most fundamental belief we had was an illusion? That our belief in our self was an illusion? It kind of makes this whole idea of knowledge fall apart. If we misperceived the concept of a self into existing, what other delusions have we also willed upon ourselves? How can we trust anything we believe or know? Or that there is a difference between believing and knowing? How do we know if anything is knowable? Or if we have the ability to choose what to believe? Or what to do? Or if we even have the free will to do either of those things? Or if existence is even any better than nonexistence (can’t escape the dualistic thinking)? Or how we can even evaluate that question or any other? Does that mean everything we think we know is illusion? How is it possible to even have thoughts if everything is illusion? And, what is it that is even having the thoughts or experiencing those illusions? Can we even prove we exist? At least apart from anything else? And, if we are everything, can we prove anything exists? Or does that prove that everything exists and therefore so do we? This is an existential loop. Or is it?
Is that what it means to be everything? We can’t think our way out of it because we are it?
We=Everything.
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