Insidious Delusion

Talk given 5/24/2021 by Mary Stancavage

What I wanted to talk about tonight is the topic of delusion. I ran head on to delusion this week, and it got me thinking about it. It's one of the defilements, or poisons. In the Buddha's teachings, the defilements are greed, hatred (or aversion), and delusion (or ignorance). I talked about ignorance a couple of weeks ago in the context of a particular sutta. But I wanted to talk about delusion through a different lens. It’s important because I am seeing a lot of it these days, or maybe I'm more able to identify it. It's like, once you see something, then you see it everywhere. For example, if you get a new car, then that's the only car you see. Seemingly, everybody's driving the same one as you. So, delusion seems to be everywhere. I think it's important to recognize what it looks like because we may not always recognize it for what it is. So, it's helpful to have the Buddhist teachings to help identify delusion. Personally, I've been steeped in these teachings for a while and living this way. It’s shifted how I see the world. It's true with anything; where we are, what we're comfortable with, or what we're exposed to. That's how we begin to see the world, which points to what the Buddha taught.  You're impacted by what's going on. It's also important to have clarity around it. You are not just living without thinking. There needs to be some awareness, which is why we sit because we're cultivating awareness. 

Delusion, simply put, is not seeing clearly. It’s falsely interpreting the senses, not actually being clear about our experiences. There are the five senses that we're all used to. In Buddhism, there's a sixth sense called thought, which is not correctly interpreting what we think, what we see, what we hear. All these six senses contribute to delusion. There are different types of delusion. There's the unintentional delusion, which is not understanding or misinterpreting what we're seeing. It's this innocent misunderstanding. An example is if somebody says something and you hear something totally different, that can lead to delusion. I call that creative listening. This type of delusion is common. How often do we do that? I know I do it quite a bit. Another example is when a person says something and the other person interprets what was meant, or they try to predict the future. That's believing the stories the mind creates. It's making certainty out of things that are not certain, especially with the future. People are convinced that this is the way it is, that's the way it's going to be. And there's nothing we can do about it. That's ignorance. It's also delusion that we're caught in. It's how we run our lives much of the time based on false pretenses. 

The Buddha talks about how this is where suffering is created. It’s because of these delusions. There is a sutta that talks about inappropriate attention, or attention that's not right. It’s attention that is a misinterpretation and not paying attention. In other words, not being mindful. It can turn into a growth, and it just multiplies. It's like the snowball that rolls down a hill. When it gets to the bottom of the hill, it's this ginormous thing that wipes out anybody in its way. We must be cautious with it and bring mindfulness and clarity. When we let go of the delusion the result is wisdom or clarity. We see clearly what's true. Instead of believing what I think is true, I believe what is true or what presents itself in the moment because sometimes we can't know the full story. So, there's this unintentional ignorance or unintentional delusion that if we don't pay attention, this stuff can get carried away. It's like when you hear the words to songs incorrectly. You think that's what they are and then you find out what they really are, and you wonder how you ever thought it was anything else than what you thought. 

Another type of delusion is intentional delusion, which is the delusion of deception. It’s driven by greed, driven by aversion, or hatred, and all their manifestations. It's this delusion of belief we have of thinking a certain way about other people. I had an encounter with someone this week. We were having a conversation about some things that happened a couple of years ago. I asked, “well, what about this situation?” And he said, “well, this is what happened”. I was sitting there knowing full well that that's not what happened. My whole being was like, this is a lie. This is an absolute lie. But then when I reflected on it more, I thought “this person actually thinks that this is what happened”, but he created a story to justify behavior.  This happens a lot with intentional delusion. It may not start out as full-blown delusion, but it starts out as a deception. Deception is often in protection of the self. We must

armor ourselves or guard ourselves against this delusion of belief. I found this article by David Loy, who is a Buddhist teacher. He talks about this in the way the Buddha talks about the concept of no self. We are conditioned beings based on who we're with, what we're exposed to, how we perceive, whether we're clear, or whether we're not clear. So, there's all these things at play, that are causalities for how we are in the world; what we like, what we don't like, our preferences, what we believe, what we think. So, there's this idea of no fixed self. He talks about looking at this idea of not self in modern terms. He says a modern way to express this truth of anatta (or not self) is that the ego self has no reality of its own. We are a construct; there's no fixed being inside of me or inside of any of us. He said, the fact is important because it allows for the possibility of a deconstruction of it. He talks about the spiritual path as a quest of deconstructing the delusion we have about ourselves. He says we spend our lives trying to accomplish things that we think will make us more real. But no matter how hard we try, our sense of self can never become a real self. So, we try and achieve, we try and accomplish, we create stories that support how we view the world. From a larger view, this is where oppression comes from. There is a difference between us because of our skin color, our gender, or our sexual orientation, or any number of things, There are great narratives that have been brought forth to prove these things, but they're all a delusion. They are intentional and it's fed by greed and delusion. If you look at the history of race, race is a construct. If you look at the history of how it was created, it was created for economic gain.

Over centuries, it's evolved into a vast network of beliefs and systems that really oppressed people, causing great harm and suffering. We have all experienced this delusion, this creation of self. I am “me” and you are “you” and there's this idea of separation between. It can be painful, but it is delusion. That is so powerful. David Loy points out that many of our social problems can be traced back to this. There are delusions of groups. Wars are fought over delusion. Corporations institutionalize group delusion, which is supported by the media. So, it's this collective delusion that we operate under. It's important to have clarity around that idea because of the tremendous suffering that's caused by it. Group delusion is driven by greed, driven by fear, driven by hatred. We must begin to learn to disrupt it, and the only way to address it is by personal spiritual practice because that's all we can do, all we have is this. This personal spiritual practice is to start chipping away at our delusions, so we begin to step out of the collective delusion that many of us have grown up with. 

In my own personal spiritual practice, I am working to let go of “should” because should is is a powerful one for me. I think that if I do the things I “should” do, I'll get the gold star. This practice is about a willingness to sit with what shows up. There's almost a tension and discordance between what we've always thought versus what's true or real, what is being experienced in this moment. You know, we must learn to disrupt these inherited delusions. Because we do have inherited delusions, inherited trauma, there's stuff that shifts our DNA, so to speak. I know “should” is deep with me, just like these ideas of how the world should be and how people see the world. The willingness to end the delusion takes a lot of work. It takes this personal spiritual practice and a willingness to sit. Delusion is comfort, delusion is security, delusion is a guarantee, even if it's not true. It's like, if this happens, then the world will be okay for me, then I'll get the prize, then everything will be right again. To use a horrible phrase, then “America will be great again”, if these people are put over here, build that wall, then things will be ok. It's this false idea of security. This is another delusion, things are not impermanent, we can have something that's permanent. That's the grand illusion that we chase. We are chasing permanence, but that’s not going to happen. Things may seem to last a long time, but they will end they will end. The Satipatthana sutta, which is the instructions on mindfulness, talks about how we diligently sit with what is, clearly knowing when there's an in breath when there's an out breath; when there's an emotion, when greed is present, when hatred, anger, and delusion are present, when the hindrances are present, when the awakening factors are present, when joy is present, when tranquility is present. We practice ardently with a willingness to see clearly what's here. Not the story, but what's here. That's how you break through that wall of delusion, and it can be done. The Buddha said, “I wouldn't tell you if it couldn't be done”. He said, “I teach this because I have experienced it”. There are a lot of other people over these centuries that have been practicing this that say the same thing. Personally, I've seen a shift in my own life. I'm no longer deluded in so many of the ways I was I've been in the past. I’ve been able to shed some delusions that caused so much suffering because that's what it is. And it's not just for ourselves.  When we get rid of the delusion, we no longer cause harm. We are no longer acting on ideas that were made up by other people for nefarious purposes. We are not just making mistakes because of unintentional delusions. We are paying attention and we are seeing more clearly.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

delusion, talks, greed, thinking, people, important, interpreting, collective delusion, buddha, unintentional, world, experienced, longer, hear, life, clarity, teachings, suta, accomplish, shifted