Illusion and its cure, knowledge

[TBRS1]

A key principle of Buddhism is that people naturally experience reality, but they do it through experiencing "illusion"

In other words, they see what is there, but misinterpret it.

Example:
Person "A" sits down to eat the breakfast that person "B" makes daily, before "A" has to leave for work.

On this occasion, breakfast isn't ready, and "A" goes to work hungry.

"A" is ticked off because they feel that "B" has let them down, and, by doing that, has shown "A" disrespect.

In this example, their are two main "illusions."

The first illusion is that "B" has let "A" down. This is an illusion because, before "A" came to the table, "B" received a phone call from their mother with bad news, was upset, and didn't make breakfast.

By not realizing this, "A" is the one who let "B" down.

The second illusion in this example is "A's" belief that "A" deserves special respect for merely existing.

In reality, each person begins (hopefully) with a certain degree of respect. After that, a person either adds to, or subtracts from, the respect due to them via their actions.

By assuming that "B" was at fault rather than finding out what happened, "A" ended up deserving less respect.

The "cure" for illusion is to understand, and dispel ignorance. In the above example, the illusion is dispelled as soon as one understands what REALLY happened.

 

[Tuffsy]

You are truly wise Grasshopper! I will try and mend my ways, but I am just soooo selfish.

 

[TBRS1]

You are truly wise Grasshopper! I will try and mend my ways, but I am just soooo selfish.

Well, have fun with that.

 

[lunarious]

I have to think to understand. Is it true you are not supposed to think much and live in the moment?

But Imam, while greatly knowledgeable and maybe he can mentalize, he says Heaven ≠ Knowledge. Knowledge is neither good or bad. There's no illness to cure...

Dunya in Islam approximately = Samsara .... i'm 99% sure people and technology read my mind, i feel it. The world (Dunya) win over me if i attacked them while being Patient. So i will not attack them.

There are people who kill people, i offer Peace through my presence, which may be cocky funny. Hopefully funny.

But I wait, like a mouintain maybe, until Allah release me from my post, like they say. And i may forever stay, unless i get cocky funny

 

[TBRS1]

I have to think to understand. Is it true you are not supposed to think much and live in the moment?

Yes and no.

Meditations that focus on "mindfulness" temporarily require that one separates one's self from "thought" in order to experience, for a moment, what pure perception is - being aware without attaching one's attention to random passing thoughts.

However, Buddhism is considered highly intellectual (Zen Buddhists say TOO intellectual). Most other forms of Buddhist meditation require very careful application of the mind. Mindfulness meditation is a beginning step.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

A key principle of Buddhism is that people naturally experience reality, but they do it through experiencing "illusion"

In other words, they see what is there, but misinterpret it.

Agree. Another way to put it, one may not fully understand the situation because one is blinded from pertinent facts. This is very common situation that can destroy relationships.

A cognitive bias can get in the way of rational thinking. One can "leap" to a false conclusion, or worse, act upon that false conclusion before all the facts of the situation are revealed.

Temperance, patience, and intellectual curiosity must come together. Not over reacting emotionally and then asking clarifying questions in order to fill in the information.

 

[TBRS1]

Agree. Another way to put it, one may not fully understand the situation because one is blinded from pertinent facts. This is very common situation that can destroy relationships.

A cognitive bias can get in the way of rational thinking. One can "leap" to a false conclusion, or worse, act upon that false conclusion before all the facts of the situation are revealed.

Temperance, patience, and intellectual curiosity must come together. Not over reacting emotionally and then asking clarifying questions in order to fill in the information.

Yeah - the cognitive biases, as well as the genetically programmed reactions that lead us to see danger even when it doesn't exist (such as "fear of those unlike me") are all called " forms of illusion" in Buddhism.

Also, our "karma" (our past experiences) frequently cause us to leap to false conclusions. This is also illusion.

In Buddhism, the "eight fold path" is the route to seeing past all this error. It requires a massive investment in self guided thoughtful exploration. This is where one develops the (learnable) mental skills of "temperance, patience, and intellectual curiosity."

What is the Buddhist Eightfold Path? (The 8 Elements) | Mindworks

 

[FilterFreq]

I would go so far as to say that if were were to truly lose that illusion, there's probably more to potentially lose than what most people realize. There are regions in our brain that help us construct a sense of identity and individuality for a reason -- if it weren't for them, humans would likely never do anything cool. Sure, there wouldn't be anything to fight about or to take personally, but we're talking about an extremely boring and sterile existence all around -- eventually, like everything else, people would get tired of it. All 'flow' and no 'ebb', if you will. Sometimes you've got to breathe in.

Even our egos (when moderately balanced) serve way more of a purpose than not. A lot of the assumptions we make are indeed true (as in, "hey, that guy needs to merge lanes, I should move") and having that kind of stuff on command is extremely useful - despite the misunderstandings and problems that spiral out of it.

But, I believe that true, horrific evil exists in the world, which is an entirely different ballgame.

 

[TBRS1]

I would go so far as to say that if were were to truly lose that illusion, there's probably more to potentially lose than what most people realize. There are regions in our brain that help us construct a sense of identity and individuality for a reason -- if it weren't for them, humans would likely never do anything cool. Sure, there wouldn't be anything to fight about or to take personally, but we're talking about an extremely boring and sterile existence all around -- eventually, like everything else, people would get tired of it. All 'flow' and no 'ebb', if you will. Sometimes you've got to breathe in.

Even our egos (when moderately balanced) serve way more of a purpose than not. A lot of the assumptions we make are indeed true (as in, "hey, that guy needs to merge lanes, I should move") and having that kind of stuff on command is extremely useful - despite the misunderstandings and problems that spiral out of it.

But, I believe that true, horrific evil exists in the world, which is an entirely different ballgame.

What you say is true. A life of bla would be a life of bla, and that would be no fun.

Buddha called their path " the middle way", "middle" because it does not require extreme asceticism, nor does it encourage rampant hedonism.

One can (and should) be an individual, a unique entity, who practices Buddhism to improve their life - not give their life up to some illusionary goal.

Ego is important - absolutely! The goal should never be to eliminate the ego. The goal is to get that ego into a healthy state.

In Buddhism, there is nothing that is classified as "evil." Buddhism has a purpose - to reduce the unsatisfying nature of life. So, for this reason, Buddhism classifies actions as:

Wholesome (leading to a reduction of dissatisfaction.
Unwholesome (leading to an increase in dissatisfaction)
Neutral (neither increasing nor decreasing dissatisfaction)

 

[FilterFreq]

In Buddhism, there is nothing that is classified as "evil." Buddhism has a purpose - to reduce the unsatisfying nature of life. So, for this reason, Buddhism classifies actions as:

Wholesome (leading to a reduction of dissatisfaction.
Unwholesome (leading to an increase in dissatisfaction)
Neutral (neither increasing nor decreasing dissatisfaction)

This is really interesting. I'd love to nerd out and learn more about this sometime because admittedly I'm pretty dumb when it comes to religion (or even philosophy). Sometimes (or maybe, a lot of the time) it seems like there are actually evil people controlling the world (to varying degrees, (and our only real hope is responding with kindness and compassion for others. I'd love to have my view changed, though -- especially if this is my personal illusion!

 

[Boogs]

It's impossible to perceive reality, can't be done by any living thing, in fact the laws of physics don't allow it.
Good and evil are just anthropic abstractions, nothing more, however important to us, or not.

It's been shown (as best these things can be shown) that it's an evolutionary advantage (i.e. it confers strong survival/breeding ability) to NOT be able to perceive reality - brains have their limits, and to have to process so much data that leaves them less well equipped to make very the fast decisions needed for survival. While a creature that filters much of the incoming data may sometimes make a wrong decision, they make the right one often enough and faster than their reality perceiving fellow creature, who may make the right decision every time, but too slowly for it to help them.

Even knowledge and learning can be a false path, for the more one knows, the less one can learn, and not because there's less left to learn, the possibilities are near infinite, but because the very act of 'knowing' one thing precludes many others that may disagree with that thing.

We are in the main creatures of, shall we say loose logic? Our brains are not digital computers where something is right or wrong, true or false but rather probability engines, we can be both together at the same time, because everything we think of and do and say is always right and wrong, because we only rationalise things with respect to ourselves.

What you say is true. A life of bla would be a life of bla, and that would be no fun.

More accurately, we would not exist, because to exist we've had to fight tooth and claw, with every predator wanting the resources we need, and later crave for. A life of Blah wouldn't equip us to survive as well as one of anger and hate! (sad to say). It may not be a nice life, but when did nice come into it?

This is more chicken and egg I think, we are how we are because we've needed to be 'unsatisfactory' to survive above all else, because when the chips are down, that's the bottom line that evolution promises us. All our civilised ethics have only been possible because of our extreme violence and ability to rouse ourselves to enough anger to do the unthinkable. All these now misplaced behaviours we've evolved in order to survive (badly phrased but you know what I mean I trust) are now, in our current 'civilisation' (what a nice veneer we've polished up there!), no longer helpful for most people to survive satisfactorily.

So one answer is to adopt something alone the lines of the Buddhist faith - not necessarily religious, but a deeper more spiritual, thoughtful way of thinking, and more constructive on a community level rather than a personal level. We're attuned for personal survival and all other considerations are not instinctive, they need to be constructed, possible as Buddhism has done? (caveat: I know bog-all about it! ). We need now communal survival if we wish to continue as a species, but we can't wait for evolution to hand it on a plate, we'll need to work for it, with no guarantee it'll help at all!

 

[Boogs]

Wholesome (leading to a reduction of dissatisfaction.
Unwholesome (leading to an increase in dissatisfaction)
Neutral (neither increasing nor decreasing dissatisfaction)

I'm curious, what does Buddhism say about what satisfaction is? Could it include the satisfaction Mr Schicklgruber may have felt at invading Poland last century? Is satisfaction nuanced? Is it only relevant to the person experiencing it?
I feel sure it can't be that basic, as that would open a world of horror as being 'satisfactory', so I assume there are some criteria - i.e. not at the expense of other peoples satisfaction? Can you elucidate, I'm just curious to be honest?

 

[Boogs]

I'm pretty dumb when it comes to religion (or even philosophy).

Ignorance isn't stupidity! (assuming that's what you mean by 'dumb').
Don't put yourself down just because there's a topic of interest you haven't yet tackled!
(and I bet you do have some philosophy, even if it's your own (the best sort!)).

 

[Boogs]

I'd love to have my view changed, though -- especially if this is my personal illusion!

People come in all shapes and sizes, their brains included (and you know this of course!).
Behaviours that now seem 'bad' used to be an advantage.

There's a saying from old days that I'm very fond of and shows the 'peasant' class are not so stupid as they were made out to be!

"Better a bad king than no King.
Better no King than a child King."

They understood that even under the abuses of a 'bad' King, it was still preferable to no King at all, or worse, one that's essentially insane (a 'child', unable to make rational decisions for the good of their kingdom etc). The other qualities a King could bring to the table would help their survival and stability, even if it took a callous and cruel person to do it! So evolution has favoured these useful traits as evolution does for all traits (you thought autism has no purpose? Think again, study the effects of sexual reproduction (at the cellular and genetic level) which promotes variation beyond the use of random mutation (the randomised mixing of two working genetic codes vs. the random change to some part of the genome that has a tiny chance of being viable).

Sex itself promotes a wide variety within a species preventing stagnation and promoting evolution. Some of these variations include people with very short tempers and a propensity toward violence, and it's this small section who are critical in bringing us to this point (for better or worse) and we can easily see these people as pure evil in certain contexts while seeing them as heroes in other contexts. Good and evil are artificial constructs and tend to categorise things far more complex into a simple yes/no paradigm that doesn't reflect the truth other than in a limited context.

 

[TBRS1]

This is really interesting. I'd love to nerd out and learn more about this sometime because admittedly I'm pretty dumb when it comes to religion (or even philosophy). Sometimes (or maybe, a lot of the time) it seems like there are actually evil people controlling the world (to varying degrees, (and our only real hope is responding with kindness and compassion for others. I'd love to have my view changed, though -- especially if this is my personal illusion!

The thing I'd ask is: Does the nasty person controling the world believe they are doing good (for example, by preventing disorder)?

If the answer is "yes", they are experiencing an illusion.

 

[AprilR]

This topic made me think. I think everyone perceives things and events from their own viewpoint. So they are always subjective. By interacting with different people with different viewpoints, or reading and researching you can be more objective.

Like in your example, the person A can know the truth only if they dont assume and ask the other person. But there is also the possibility that person B simply did not want to prepare breakfast that day and did it out of spite. So everything is possible.

If these people like and trust each other they will think of the good possibility, person A will think that person B was busy that day. And will be understanding. How you feel about the other person affects your thoughts about them and in general.

 

[Boogs]

I know I see things in a very crude fashion and lack a lot of subtlety, but from my perspective 'objectivity' is an abstract concept like 'infinity' and 'perfection' et al.

We are born with next to no knowledge of our environment, mostly just the pre-programmed behaviours of our genetics. Our minds (and the brains they run on) are locked away from our environment in a cage of all encompassing bone (I speak conceptually, I know there are holes to allow cables in and out of the brain for our I/O function).

The ONLY contact we have with our external reality, is the internal reality we've constructed out of raw data. The fact we perceive things as reality is just the simple fact that this filtered and processed data is all there is to work from. We have no knowledge of any other baseline we can intuitively compare to what we perceive, so have nothing to be able to objectively compare or measure our perceptions with respect to what we imagine is reality.

There are certain commonalities most of us assume we see in essentially the same fashion and get the same meaning from it, and yet interestingly most people are rather adverse to trying to compare and define their own internal definitions. We all have a slightly different Boogs-to-Human dictionaries where every word, phrase, concept has a different meaning but we assume we all have the same.

I only came to this conclusion after discovering aphantasia - the difference was so obviously extreme to what most others experience, yet until I learned of it's existence and nature, I always assumed everyone thought like I did (in process if not the conclusions). Comments about the minds eye, and visualising things, I always took to be metaphorical, I was gobsmacked when I first learned most people can experience sensory data, either from imagine or past experience.

It made me realise just how much we all live in very different worlds. We don't see reality directly, we 'see' the map in our mind that's built from the heavily processed and pre-processed sensory data input (vision, sound, smell, etc etc). But to us it IS reality because there's nothing else to go by that 'appears' to be common between most of us. Our perception of our world is shaped by our experiences of it up to that point.

 

[TBRS1]

This topic made me think. I think everyone perceives things and events from their own viewpoint. So they are always subjective. By interacting with different people with different viewpoints, or reading and researching you can be more objective.

Like in your example, the person A can know the truth only if they dont assume and ask the other person. But there is also the possibility that person B simply did not want to prepare breakfast that day and did it out of spite. So everything is possible.

If these people like and trust each other they will think of the good possibility, person A will think that person B was busy that day. And will be understanding. How you feel about the other person affects your thoughts about them and in general.

That is correct, absolutely.

How one feels about a thing affects what a person believes is happening.

If I am afraid of dogs, all dogs are frightening and intimidating.

But reality is made of real things. The reality is that some dogs are dangerous, but most are not.

Learning the truth of the way things are does not change reality, but it does change one's perceptions to something that more closely match reality.

 

[TBRS1]

...It made me realise just how much we all live in very different worlds. We don't see reality directly, we 'see' the map in our mind that's built from the heavily processed and pre-processed sensory data input (vision, sound, smell, etc etc). But to us it IS reality because there's nothing else to go by that 'appears' to be common between most of us. Our perception of our world is shaped by our experiences of it up to that point.

So very, very true.

Each person exists in their own head, with only very crude tools like "language" to connect with the inner world of others.

But the defining characteristic of reality is that it is real. What we tend to experience is a reaction to reality, based on an interpretation of reality, which is formed by our past, very limited experiences with a particular class of real things.

The problem with "interpretations" is that they are no longer reality. They are an amalgam of real things + one's subjective experience.

A deep dive into "what is really going on here" should cause the amalgam to more closely reflect reality by reducing the observers reliance on subjective experience.

 

[AprilR]

That is correct, absolutely.

How one feels about a thing affects what a person believes is happening.

If I am afraid of dogs, all dogs are frightening and intimidating.

But reality is made of real things. The reality is that some dogs are dangerous, but most are not.

Learning the truth of the way things are does not change reality, but it does change one's perceptions to something that more closely match reality.

Learning the truth of things is maybe possible for natural phenomenon.

Learning the truth when it comes to people on the other hand? I think it is impossible because no matter how close you are to a person, they live in a whole different world than you. Maybe truth does not even exist in human relationships. And it is impossible to "know" a person even when you lived with them for years.

Just sharing my thoughts as this topic is very interesting