We can think of consciousness, which is the fifth skandha of the five skandhas or aggregates, that the Buddha likened to a magician’s illusion, as the mechanism of illusion. Consciousness is also what gets reborn as we go from one existence to next (consciousness is the third nidāna/cause, starting from avidyā in the list of the 12-nidānas or the tenth cause starting from jarāmāraṇa/old age and death).
In later Buddhism, consciousness appeared to grow in importance becoming the ālayavijñāna, that is, the “abode or store-house of consciousness” (it could be plural, too) which is said, according to D.T. Suzuki, “to store all the memory of one's past deeds and psychic activities,” in the form of vāsanā or “habit energy.” It seems to me that vāsanā plays an important role in keeping us in the confines of the ālayavijñāna in which we ever remain victims of the magician’s trick which is always hidden from us. For us, the world we live in and hold dear and will one day die in seems very real.
There is yet, for us, no parāvṛtti in the ālayavijñāna, which would be a major change from being caught in the magician's enchanting sphere of consciousness to being, actually, liberated from it (not just imagining). According to Suzuki,
To gain this inner perception, a man retires into a solitary spot all by himself, and, by applying himself assiduously to abstract meditations and deep reflections, his inner sense (prajñā) or self-knowledge (svabuddhi) begins to shine out from underneath the residual accumulation (vāsanā) of the past thoughts, affections, and deeds since time immemorial.
Unfortunately, most of us are not like the wise adept who lives a solitary life struggling to have the required change/revulsion or parāvṛtti so that he or she might escape from the insidious power of the ālayavijñāna. The wise adept also knows that there is no end to rebirth without the victory of parāvṛtti. According to the Lankavatara Sutra,
“When a revulsion (vyāvṛtti, generally parāvritti) takes place, the citta [Mind] is disengaged from turbidity; as it understands all existence, I state that the citta is the Buddha."
Short of parāvṛtti, the sincere student, who is not yet disengaged from their impure mind; who has not gone to a solitary spot, should begin to see that this world is not a real refuge—far from it. It is a place of suffering. Of our revulsion towards it, it must begin with accepting the fact that we are living in a kind of all-too-real seductive matrix (remember the 1999 sci-fi movie?).
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