If you look out the window, see a beautiful world, and deem it real, you should also know that some of the smartest people of our time, such as Albert Einstein and Elon Musk, have doubts about the reality they experience. Einstein allegedly said, “reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one.” Elon Musk, on the other hand, suggests that we are living in a computer simulation. Most significantly, quantum mechanics, one of the best scientific theories available today, holds that “reality at its fundamental level is uncertain, fluid, and dependent on observation.”
While Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, and quantum mechanics differ on what reality is, their shared doubt about the nature of reality points to a mystery humanity has struggled to understand since pre-Socratic Greece: the mystery of “What Exist?”
“What Exist:” The Question
The question, “What Exists?“, is asked on Closer to Truth with the remarks, “Lots of things exist. But what’s truly fundamental? The challenge is to discern the minimum number of basic categories that explain the entirety of existence.”
As stated on its website, the mission of Closer to Truth is to “represent the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest question, to explore the fundamental questions of existence.” The fact that the world’s greatest thinkers have to gather to explore “What Exists?” indicates humanity’s continued struggle to understand the fundamental nature of the reality it experiences.
When this simple question was put to four highly regarded and learned scientists, they offered four different answers. Among them, there were four different views, ranging from a quantum physicist who believes that “the universe is a quantum mechanical wave function,” to one believing that consciousness has equal standing with physics, to one who thinks that reality is limited to what is known only to science, to a quantum physicist who believes in God.
The fact is that, even with the advent of Einstein’s Theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, physics still does not have a grip on the nature of reality it experiences.
Unable to find the answer in the physical world, Closer to Truth explores topics relating to consciousness, such as “Is Consciousness Ultimate Reality?” “Is Consciousness Fundamental?“, and “Does Consciousness Cause the Cosmos?“That consciousness exists almost everyone agrees. What consciousness means—that’s where arguments and disputations arise. Must consciousness have ‘meaning’? Or can consciousness be a random accident, selected by evolution, the ‘foam on the waves’ of brain activity?” “But consciousness seems so radically vital.”
As with the physical world, discussions about consciousness and the Mind-Body Problem invoke many opinions from highly qualified and learned scientists, philosophers, and religious leaders, but no unanimous agreement.
Ultimately, the search for existence boils down to two types of existence: the body and the mind. However, a centuries-long problem, known as the Body-Mind Problem, has existed between them since the sixteenth century.
As stated on Closer to Truth, nowadays, the Mind-Body Problem relates to “How is it possible that mushy masses of brain cells, passing chemicals and shooting sparks, can cause mental sensations and subjective feelings? How can brain chemistry and electricity be ‘about’ things? Can physical activities literally be mental activities? Physical and mental activities seem so radically different.”What possible warrant can we have for asserting that the existence of these mental contents is caused by things of an entirely and fundamentally different character from them to which we can never have direct access, namely, objects?” In other words, how can that which is considered the body interact with that which is considered the mind, where the content of the objects is processed?so different different”. Lacking the ability to understand either the mind or the body, humanity cannot understand either the relationship between them or the difference between them.
In this video, Absolute Truth on Big Think, Dr. Sylvester J. Gates offered his opinion on what science can and cannot do, as he said, “All we can do in science is construct theories, and that means, for example, that what we are ultimately doing is not about the Truth…..Science is not about finding the Truth. Science is about making our beliefs of nature less false. These are two different things.”
So, what is the Truth? Dr. Gates did not elaborate. From the Buddhist standpoint, the Truth is the nature of reality humanity faces. Understanding the nature of reality is, ultimately, understanding the answer to “What Exists?”
“What Exists?” Buddha answers.List of Enlightened People, the author lists people he/she considers enlightened. While there is no indication that everyone on the list was enlightened in the Buddhist way, at least three people are well known and acknowledged as such: the Buddha himself, Adyashanti, and Dharma Master Hui-Neng, known globally as the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, who lived in Tang Dynasty China.
Buddha, of course, is on the list because he originated the teaching that the universe is mental. Since they are enlightened in the Buddhist way, Adyashanti and Dharma Master Hui-Neng need to verify that the universe is mental. Furthermore, to verify that the universe is mental, the universe deemed “physical” should disappear upon their enlightenment. Therefore, the vanishing of the universe is the hallmark of a Buddhist enlightenment.
In the Verification Category, we discuss the enlightenment experiences of Adyashanti, Dharma Master Hui-Neng, and another prominent monk in Tang Dynasty China. If you are interested, please visit them here and here, respectively.
As a contemporary American, Adyashanti’s description is the easiest to understand. Not only does his description not need translation from ancient Chinese, but his use of latter-day language, such as awareness, is precise and easier to understand.
Adyashanti, meaning “primordial peace,” is “an American-born Stephen Gray on October 26, 1962,” and “a former spiritual teacher and author from the San Francisco Bay Area who offered talks, online study courses, and retreats in the United States and abroad.”<
"At age 25, Gray began experiencing a series of transformative spiritual awakenings. While sitting alone on his cushion, Gray describes how he had a classic kensho, or awakening experience, in which he “penetrated to the emptiness of all things and realized that the Buddha I had been chasing was what I was.” “Besides his meditations and prayer, he also studied books about Christian mystics and the Gospels.” “For the next few years, he continued his meditation practice while also working at his father’s machine shop. In addition to sitting, he spent many hours in coffee shops writing answers to questions that spontaneously came to him. Finally, at 31, Gray had an experience of awakening that put to rest all his questions and doubts. In 1996, Adyashanti began teaching with the approval of his teacher, Arvis Joen Justi.” “He is the author of numerous books, CDs, and DVDs, and, together with his wife Mukti, is the founder of Open Gate Sangha, Inc., a nonprofit organization established in 1996 which supports and makes available his teachings.”
Our discussion focuses on his special meditation in search of the answer to “What is the Nature of Self?” In other words, he was searching for the fundamental nature of his existence, which, of course, is the answer to “What Exist?” As Adyashanti described, “In this meditation, we are looking at the nature of self, or what we call ourselves. The nature of this thing called me. In this meditation, we are looking for ourselves.”
So, what did he find?
Again, in his own words, “as we direct our attentions inward, we find something unexpected. The more we look for the essential nature of ourselves, the more we look for ourselves, the less we find.” “This elusive self never seems to appear. The more we look for ourselves, the less we find of it. Instead, we seem to bump into an ineffable mystery, a silence, a void.” “And yet, what is it that notices that void, that silence? What is it that is aware?”
The Buddhist term describing the “void” is known in Romanized Sanskrit as Shunyata/Sunyata.
Also known as Emptiness (Chinese: 空), Shunyata/Sunyata, according to The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, is a “central notion of Buddhism….Shunyata is often equated with the absolute in the Mahāyāna since it is without duality and empirical forms.”
In Buddhism, “Absolute” does not refer to any religious deity; it is another name for Ultimate Reality.
Adyashanti was in a “void” because the Ultimate Reality is without empirical forms, meaning that it cannot be sensed. In other words, the Ultimate Reality cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched.
An example of a phenomenon that cannot be sensed is natural gas. Indeed, natural gas does not manifest itself and is not something that humans can see, hear, smell (without adding an odorant), taste, or touch.
So, what is the Ultimate Reality?
Adyashanti hinted at it as he questioned, “And yet, what is it that notices that void, that silence? What is it that is aware?” Indeed, when everything in the world deemed “physical” disappeared, including his own body, the only thing left of himself was his awareness that he was in a “void.”
Indeed, after his enlightenment, Adyashanti now teaches: i) You Are Awareness,” ii) “you and awareness are not two different things,” and iii) “resting in awareness is not a state of doing; it is a state of being.”
In other words, Adyshanti’s answer to “What is the nature of self?” is “awareness.” Indeed, this is what Buddha teaches: the Ultimate Reality of the cosmos is awareness. Defined as a quiescent mentality, awareness is the Ultimate Reality because, being quiescent, the reality it represents is always the same.
In contrast, consciousness is defined as a fluctuating mentality. As a fluctuating mentality, conscious thoughts change constantly. As anyone who has meditated can tell you, it is very hard to calm the mind down, as conscious thoughts come in and out of existence so rapidly that it is challenging to calm the mind down. Therefore, while consciousness is a reality, it is not the Ultimate Reality in Buddhism. Only a reality that never changes can be the Ultimate Reality in Buddhism.
The permanence of the Ultimate Reality is, of course, verifiable. Buddha learned about the Ultimate Reality while meditating under the Bodhi Tree 2,600+ years ago, and taught it. Adyashanti learned about it in the 20th century and taught it. In between were the two Chinese monks in Tang Dynasty China, and both taught it after their enlightenment.
If you are truly interested in understanding the nature of reality you are in, I highly recommend listening to Adyashanti’s broadcast directly, located here. Its impact will be much more significant if you hear it from Adyashanti in his own words.
Of course, Buddhism does not exist only because Buddha wants you to know what you are made of. Instead, Buddhism exists because he wants to solve a problem that affects all humanity: the fact that humans live a transient life, meaning that death is inevitable the minute one is born.
You may rightfully wonder, how can that be reversed? Then ask yourself: now that you know that the “physical” body is illusory, how real can its death be? If the death of a physical body is meaningless, then what?
This is the question Buddha wants to answer for all of humanity.
In the Lotus Sūtra (Chinese: 妙法蓮華經), “one of the most influential and venerated Buddhist Mahāyāna sūtras” and “contains the final teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha—complete and sufficient for salvation,” Buddha states his soteriological mission, as below.
“I vowed in the beginning (Chinese: 我本立誓願).
To make all living beings my equals without a difference (Chinese: 欲令一切眾, 如我等無異).< What I have vowed in the past, I have now fulfilled (Chinese: 如我昔所願, 今者已滿足).< To transform them so they can all enter the path of Buddhahood. (Chinese: 化一切眾生, 皆令入佛道。)”
To be like Shakyamuni Buddha without a difference is to become enlightened like him at the highest level of Buddhahood, known as a Tathāgata.
Tathāgata (Chinese: 如來), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit and Pali, lit., one who has thus come/gone.” “A secondary denotation of the term is to understand ‘things as they are.’” The translation of Tathāgata in Chinese is a thus-come one (Chinese: 如來).
In other words, when one becomes a Tathāgata, one knows “things as they are,” which, in Buddhism, means the mental nature of all reality.
However, knowing “things as they are” is only the beginning. The real benefit is
However, having nothing to possess is not a bad thing, as he became “carefree without fear,” and “free from topsy-turvy reveries (Chinese: 心無罣礙, 無罣礙故, 無有恐怖, 遠離顛倒夢想).”
So, how long can that lifestyle last?
In the Lotus Sūtra, Buddha provides the answer, as he said,
“Listen carefully to a Tathāgata’s secret and transcendent powers. The devas, humans, and asuras in all the worlds all think that the present Buddha, Śākyamuni, left the palace of the Śākyas, sat on the terrace of enlightenment not far from the city of Gayā, and attained anuttara-samyaksambodhi. However, O sons of a virtuous family, immeasurable, limitless, hundreds of thousands of myriads of koṭis of nayutas of kalpas have passed since I actually attained Buddhahood. (Chinese: 汝等諦聽, 如來秘密神通之力. 一切世間天, 人, 及阿修羅, 皆謂, 今釋迦牟尼佛, 出釋氏宮, 去伽耶城不遠, 坐於道場, 得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提. 然善男子, 我實成佛已來, 無量無邊, 百千萬億那由他劫.”
Rather than elucidating the various Buddhist terms contained in the message, I would like to summarize it: “While everyone thinks that I, as Shakyamuni Buddha, was enlightened in this lifespan, the fact is that I have been a Buddha for eons upon eons.”
In other words, when one becomes a Tathāgata, one lives for eons upon eons while enjoying a lifestyle that is “carefree without fear,” and “free from topsy-turvy reveries.”
This fact is backed up indirectly by the Buddha in Buddhist sutras, where the Buddha describes that there are innumerable Buddhas in the universe. There are so many of them because they all live for eons and eons.
Indeed, in Buddhism, one gets a reward comparable to a religious deity. Since one creates one’s own universe through one’s own observation, one might as well live like a creator!
I want to finish this post with what the Buddha says in the Diamond Sutra, when he promised that he would, like all the
In other words, the Buddha is not only a teacher of reality, but, like a good reporter, reports only on what he personally has experienced to be the reality.
In the next post, we discuss humanity’s struggle to understand the nature of reality since pre-Socratic Greece until today, without success. After that, we will discuss the Buddha and his teachings, and why this kind of knowledge can only be achieved by an enlightened person, but never by the scientific method.
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