Reality and Misplaced Hope

Part four of a series. Chandrakirti states from a logical philosophical position that even the smallest duration of time cannot hold what is illusory. So, not even the smallest moment of time has the natural structural capacity to hold what is truly real. Because it has no inherent reality, it is empty of inherent self-sustaining existence and because of that, its appearance is illusory.

The very thing that your hope is placed on to be real and stable and a support of meaning is in fact without that very thing that makes it real to you. Now, I have to state it in another way because it is important. It does not have even the possibility of creating this support because your current view belongs to the human realm perceptual support, in other words the innate view. What you are resting your hopes to understand reality is the illusory innate view that is not meant to support the very thing that you intellectually want it to be. It is not possible for it to be this. This is the perceptual story that is bonded to your essence being to help you be alive in this realm.

Even the inner bases of the outer senses such as the ear of the ear etcetera, are illusory arisals, as they are even more fully hypnotized into the belief taking the transitory to be real. We are talking about the inner eye of the eye, up to consciousness itself. They are all lacking the marks and signs of actual reality. In addition, they are an inferior kind of learning device and should be seen for the poor quality dynamics that they are in comparison to new dynamics being presented. They exist as part of the structure to receive the programming for human manifestation. We do not attempt to directly reprogram inner minds from the outside except by the reproducible foundational concepts. Otherwise we could damage the mind.

We have been fooled beyond the careful balanced innate view needed to participate in the human realm, into thinking that the inner bases will provide something that they are not capable of providing. So, we should not blame our blessing innate view, although in most philosophies and practices, we blame our innate view. Perhaps we should begin to disrespect it carefully because it is not the fault of the innate view. The innate view has allowed us to participate in this human realm for a very long time, but once we began to think that it was going to provide us something that it cannot provide, then we are wrong.

Self-cherishing also has a large role to play in the innate view. Remember that self-cherishing has an important function of self-protection that allows you not just to be here but to continue being here. If you did not have certain kinds of protective self-cherishing, you would not be able to endure the psychological and physical onslaughts. Buddhism helps you reduce and eliminate the harmful aspects of self-cherishing carefully by presenting you with a better option of cherishing others.

If you simply lost self-cherishing, you would be fragile and helpless in the onslaughts of ordinary life. At the first opportunity, you would give up, so part of the correct view discussed earlier needs to be a more realistic sense of self-preservation. This is why mentors feel concern for good eating habits and daily care for someone who is freshly in the correct view.

The dangers of self-cherishing by misusing the ego or other structures inappropriately are extensively covered under other teachings by myself and others. Even the ramifications or secondary effects of self-cherishing have cause you or others to do so many things that you are sorry for later. Now that we are discussing deep subjects here, your responsibilities increase to reduce the poor strategies of self-cherishing and retain the correct perception regarding this important point. To be continued…