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Introduction
Now it is my happy task to help you to gain entrance into the real world, the world in which there are no dwarfs and giants and meaningless arguments. In the real world there is only peace, and joy, and truth, and freedom from the nagging desire for troublesome illusions.
Dear friends, every human being possesses two self-natures: an apparent one and a real one. The apparent one is our small Self or ego which is everywhere different from all other small selves; the real one is our Great Buddha Self which is everywhere the same. Our small self exists in the apparent world, the world of Samsara. Our Buddha Self exists in the real world, the world of Nirvana.
Both worlds are located in the same place. In the Heart Sutra we read, "Form is not different from emptiness and emptiness is not different from form:" Everyone wants to know, "How can Samsara and Nirvana be the same? How can illusion be the same as reality? How can I be me and the Buddha, too?" These are good questions. Every Buddhist needs to know the answer to them.
The answer lies in the way we perceive reality. If we perceive reality directly, we see it in its Nirvanic purity. If we perceive it indirectly through our ego consciousness, we seen its Samsaric distortion. Why is our view of reality flawed?
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Samsara is the world our small self thinks it sees and apprehends with its senses. Sometimes we just make mistakes. If a man were walking in the woods and came upon a coil of rope on the path and he thought the rope was a snake, he'd quickly run away. To him that rope was a snake and he'd react accordingly. When he returned home he'd likely tell everyone about that dangerous snake that almost bit him in the woods. His fear was genuine. His reason for being afraid was not. The small ego self also misperceives reality whenever
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Illustration by Yao Xin
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it imposes arbitrary esthetic or moral judgments upon it. If one woman sees another woman who is wearing a green hat and says, "I see a woman who is wearing a green hat," there is no problem. But if she says, "I see a woman who is wearing an ugly green hat," she is making a Samsaric judgment. Somebody else might find that hat beautiful. But in reality, it is neither beautiful nor ugly, merely is.
Likewise, when a fox kills a rabbit, this, to the bunnies who will starve to death because their mother has been killed, is a very evil act. But to the hungry fox cubs who eat the rabbit that their mother has brought them, this same event is decidedly good. In reality, the event is neither good nor evil. It merely is.
Reality is also misinterpreted because both the observer and that which is
being observed are constantly changing.
There is no precise moment which a bud becomes a bloom, or a bloom becomes a fruit, or a .fruit becomes a seed, or a seed, a budding tree. All these changes are subtle and continuous.
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