Seeing Through Delusion.
#WednesdayWisdom
Many words feature in Dhamma talks but often escape our deeper understanding. ‘Delusion’ has always been such a word for me. I understand it as representing confusion and ignorance but just recently I have learnt another way of thinking about it, which I have found helpful so want to share.
Delusion refers to the way in which we see and perceive the outer world of samsara (cyclic existence). We all start out with an obstructed view of reality but can work to improve our understanding and to obtain right view, whereby we see everything clearly as the Buddha wanted us to.
If we consider our experiences, we believe that the way in which we see other people, objects and situations is a certain reality. If we think about this, we reach an understanding that everyone else must also be having their own personalised experience of this reality so we can pretty quickly see why we don’t all see eye to eye!
We bring our personal kamma, habitual views and life experience/ conditioning to each moment and then filter everything we encounter, good or bad, through a distorted lens to make it fit with what we want.
Once we realise that everything we perceive is, in fact, a fabrication of our own mind we begin to see the Buddha’s version of delusion much more clearly. We can choose where to put our focus and our energy: into the outer world, where nothing is as it seems and is beyond our control, or into our inner world where we do have control and all the power we need to make changes which will lead us towards the happiness and peace we seek.
May this teaching lead you to realisation; may it help you know the truth. May we all be freed from the suffering of birth and death.
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