The Zennist: True reality is not this illusory world

Ordinary, illusory reality (our everyday world) must appear. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a non-appearing illusion! This further means that such a reality is like a mirage or more like a rope in the night misperceived to be a venomous snake. But neither the mirage nor the venomous snake—or any illusion for that matter—has an absolute nature or substance (svabhava). Only Mind is the proper basis or substance for the arising of this illusory world and its things. Until we perfectly intuit or realize pure Mind (the substance of all) we shall ever remain submerged in illusion believing it to be true reality.

But then most people seem to want to live their lives submerged in illusion rather than see it as it is, being supremely wise to the fact that no part of appearance can be taken to be real.

Even amongst Buddhists many Buddhists take the illusory world to be the real world under the idea that samsara is nirvana. They wallow in the illusory oblivious to the fact that it deals in suffering and death; not making the slightest effort see through it.

How many times in the Pali Nikayas, and the Mahayana canon, does the Buddha have to tell his followers that the psychophysical body is unreal; that it is not the self, before they stop desiring it and its world? Apparently, a lot. Even when the Buddha was alive few could understand his teaching. Even fewer could behold the eternal substance from which illusory existence was made.

Still, given the stubbornness and dullness (moha) of many Buddhists who, throughout the history of Buddhism, have tried to sell illusion as the very body of the Buddha, Buddhism has, in spite of their wrongheaded efforts, remained firm and unbending, refusing to condescend to the demands of a secular will-to-power. There is just too much in both canons to support the fact that all is an illusion except the substance (pure Mind) from which it is made.