What Did the Buddha Enlighten About?
#buddha #enlightenment #buddhism
Eastern mystics believe that this world is an illusion. This is true: they don’t just believe that the world is unreal, an illusion, maya—they know it is maya, it is an illusion, a dream. But when they use the word —world—they do not mean the objective world that science studies; no, not at all. They do not mean the world of trees, mountains, and rivers; no, not at all. They are referring to the world you create, weave within your mind, the wheel of the mind that keeps spinning and weaving continuously. Sansara has nothing to do with the external world.

There are three things to remember. One is the external world, the objective world. The Buddha never spoke about it because it was not his concern; he was not an Albert Einstein. Then there is the second world: the world of the mind, the world that psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and psychologists study. The Buddha would have a few things to say about it, not much, just a few things—in fact, just one: that it is an illusion, that it has no truth, whether objective or subjective, that it is in between.

The first world is the objective world, which science studies. The second world is the world of the mind, which psychologists study. And the third world is your subjectivity, your inner realm, your inner self.

The Buddha’s guidance is towards the innermost core of your being. But you are so entangled with the mind. Unless he helps you to become untrapped from the mind, you will never know the third world, the real world: your inner nature. Therefore, he starts with the statement: We are what we think. That is what everyone is: their mind. Everything ‘we are’ arises from our thoughts.

Because of this, the Buddha used a peculiar word: no one had ever done such a thing before, or since. Mystics always used the word ‘self’ to denote the innermost core of your being—the Buddha used the word ‘non-self.’

The Buddha did not use the word ‘self,’ atta. He used its opposite: ‘non-self,’ anatta. He said that when the mind stops, no self remains—you have become the universe, you have transcended the boundaries of the ego, you are pure space, uncontaminated by anything. You are just a mirror reflection of the Void.

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