There is a longing in the human heart for truth. For most people it is hardly detectable. For others like the Buddha, truth is better expressed as spirit which animates all creatures where in mankind finds itself hidden and overwhelmed by sensory experiences, the mightiest of which is the imagination. Even birth and death are contained within the imagination so encompassing is its seeming power.
Yet, for all the experiences which have been shaped by the imagination they are still illusory, that is, māyā. Without exception all illusions are conditioned which the unenlightened take to be real so that they are induced to cling to them.
We might even say that all illusions are experiences and all experiences are illusions. These experiences in Buddhism fall into five modes or patterns, viz., form, sensation, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness. But truly they are illusory and empty.
We further believe these modes rest on a subjective experiencer upon which all things or phenomena are grounded. With this subjectivity man thinks to have theoretical mastery over the world. For man this is the highest truth but it is also the highest delusion.
However, the subjective experiencer can never become one with the object being experienced (the great delusion). Fundamentally, all experiencing remains dual resting on subject and object, observer and observed, experiencer and experienced.
Buddhism's sublime teaching is founded on the transcendence of the experiencer and the experience, only then does one arrive at the original one before the split. Only with the sudden dropping away of the experiencer and and experience is the truth finally revealed. Then one returns to the experiencer and the experience. From that position the experiencer knows the limit; knows the utter impossibility of experiencing the absolute as an experiencer.
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