Real But Not True

What if everything you experience – thoughts, emotions, sensations, even the world itself –arises nowhere other than within the mind? This is not a philosophical idea to be believed, but a truth to be directly known. Like a night dream that feels utterly real until the moment of waking, our waking life appears solid and external until awareness turns back upon itself. This reflection explores how we fall into confusion, how wisdom naturally co-emerges, and how meditation gently reawakens us to the full, undivided nature of mind. And that is authentic well-being and human flourishing. Join me in this exploration.

Transcript

                                          Real But Not True

All that we experience – mental and sensory – arises, abides, and dissipates in the mind, in consciousness. We do not and cannot experience life in any other way. It can be difficult to grasp this fundamental truth, as it can only be known with certainty experientially. And, to know it experientially, we must remove layers and layers of conditioning that suggests reality exists somewhere “out there,” separate from the mind itself.

The clearest analogy is that of a night dream. In the dream state, all that we experience – people, places, and things – appear real, out there, and convincing. And in a sense, they are real within the context of the dream. But upon awakening from the dream, for a moment, we still feel the emotional residue of the dream but simultaneously recognize that the night dream was empty of true reality. It, of course, occurred only within the mind, a product of the mind’s capacity to generate mental appearances. What appeared real and substantial in the night dream turns out to be false in wakefulness. The dream appeared in a manner in which it did not actually exist. It was real but not true. 

And, so it is with our experiences in the waking state – mental and sensory. They appear to be quite real and convincing, but when one “awakens,” what we call “enlightenment,” the recognition dawns that these experiences, as with the night dream arise, abide, and dissipate solely in consciousness. But that waking-up, that stable recognition is difficult to sustain. It is like trying to see the ever-present sun through a thick persistent cloud cover.

The Buddhists have terms for this dilemma., which I struggled to comprehend for decades, expecting I could somehow grasp them intellectually. The two related terms are co-emergent wisdom and co-emergent confusion. We can begin our effort to understand these pivotal terms by turning to our understanding of the fundamental nature of the mind.

Meditation exists to help us to know how the mind works—not to relax temporarily, but to cultivate essential understanding. We can think of meditation as having two complementary movements: settling the mind and seeing the mind – Shamata and Vipassana. Shamata is the calming of the mind that allows for a progressive stillness. This may at first rely on techniques that suppress mental activity, but ultimately, for the stillness to be sustained, meditation relies on the capacity to simply let random mental movements come and go on their own. Through this recognition – that thoughts are impermanent, insubstantial, and self-liberating – a stable stillness emerges, irrespective of ongoing mental activity.

When the mind is sufficiently settled, vipassana naturally unfolds. Vipassana is the direct investigation of the mind’s true nature. We simply become aware of the mind itself. When we are fortunate to catch a glimpse of the natural mind, we can recognize its two inseparable aspects: its spacious, open, empty nature, and its capacity to know – to be aware. These two qualities – spacious emptiness and knowing awareness –are the true foundation of mind and everything that arises from it – which is to say, all experience. At first, our recognition of the mind’s essential nature may be fleeting, unstable, and quickly lost.

The difficulty sustaining the recognition and experience of our true nature results from the pernicious habit of dropping into only one aspects of mind’s nature – either awareness or spacious emptiness. When we collapse into the awareness aspect alone, we become solely immersed, one could say lost, in thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. That is most familiar to us. Appearances– mental and sensory – that arise in awareness as a display are mistaken as solid, independent, autonomous, personal, and external. We forget their other half – their empty, composite, impermanent and insubstantial nature. Most importantly, we forget that these dream-like experiences never leave or occur outside of the mind. This one-sided half-view is called the materialist perspective. It is mistaken, false, and the primary cause of all suffering.

In contrast, when we only drop into the spacious and empty aspect of mind – empty of any fixed characteristics – we fall into a dull, blank, vacuous void lacking awareness or mental activity. It is like a “deathless” death. It is the unconscious fear of this “nothingness” that keeps individuals busy, that drives “doingness.” This half-view is called the nihilistic perspective. It is also the cause of suffering.

Let’s now return to the two terms: co-emerging confusion and co-emerging wisdom. When we fall into either extreme – materialism or nihilism, losing ourself in appearances or emptiness – into only one aspect of our true nature we become confused, as we no longer recognize the two-fold nature of our being. We either become lost in attachment to materialism – a seemingly solid object-based world – or nihilism – a seemingly meaningless nothingness. These one-sided and false expressions of our true nature are accompanied by confusion. This is not a moral failure, but rather a simple loss of seeing, a loss of recognition of our mind’s full nature.

When we recognize both aspects of reality simultaneously – spacious emptiness and simple awareness – we know the true nature of mind and reality. That allows for an accurate and full knowing of the fundamental truth of self and reality. With this full and accurate knowing there simultaneously co-emerges a wisdom that knows the fundamental truth and essence of life. This co-emergent wisdom is precise, accurate, free of confusion-based suffering, and the great treasure of human life.

It is said that when a light is turned on in a room, the darkness of millennia disappears instantly. Likewise, when we awaken from a night dream, the belief in its reality ends forever. In the same way, when we awaken – even briefly – from the half-knowing of our true nature, we can never completely return to false understanding.

So be patient with meditation. And when a glimpse arrives – however brief – recognize and cherish it.