If you look out the window, see a beautiful world, and accept it as 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, “Realityis merely an illusion, although a very persistent one.” Elon Musk, on the other hand, suggests that we are living in a computer simulation. Indeed, if one searches for the answer to the question, “is reality?” on the Internet, one is likely to run into answers such as “’Reality’ is no more ‘real’ than dreams. We don’t know what’s ‘real.’” 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.”
The fact is that, since its existence, humanity has never solved a mystery it 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.
Indeed, 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?”
As the website states, “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 draw different opinions from highly qualified scientists, philosophers, and religious leaders, but no unanimous agreement.
Ultimately, the search for existence boils down to two categories: 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.”
George Berkeley (1685-1753), an Irish philosopher, stated the Problem in his own way: “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 what is considered the body interact with what is considered the mind, where the content from the body is processed?
The fact is that, as long as they are considered “so different,” the body and the mind can’t interact. Without understanding both the mind and the body, how can humanity understand their relationship 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 about nature. Specifically, the nature of reality humanity faces. Understanding the nature of reality is, ultimately, understanding the answer to “What Exists?”
“What Exists?” Buddha answers.
Many people are familiar with Buddhism, but few truly understand it. Many consider Buddhism a religion; others see it as a philosophy, a way of life, or even compatible with science. However, Buddhism is none of that. Instead, Buddhism is an education from our historical Shakyamuni Buddha. Furthermore, Buddhism is a unique education that answers the mystery of “What Exists?”
In Buddhist sūtras, Buddha teaches that, in the cosmos, there is Nothing but Mentality (Chinese: 心外無法). In other words, in the body-mind duality, only the Mind exists, not the Body. This means that what scientists call the “physical” universe, and everything in it, is also mental, i.e., illusory. Everything that exists exists in the mind.
Of course, for most people, this Buddhist teaching conflicts with what they consider common-sense knowledge learned from science. However, in this post, we won’t discuss the details of Buddha’s teaching or why science is wrong. Instead, we aim to prove only one thing that matters: that all physical existence, i.e., the whole universe, including the human body, is illusory, thus verifying Buddha’s teaching.
Most people with some knowledge of Buddhism realize that Buddha is unique because he is enlightened. Furthermore, he attained his enlightenment through meditation. However, they may not understand that all humans have the potential to be enlightened. It is not easy, but the potential is there. Once enlightened in the Buddhist manner, any enlightened person can verify that all things deemed “physical” or “material” are illusory, thus verifying Buddha’s foundational doctrine.
In this List of Enlightened People, the author lists people he/she considers enlightened. While the list does not indicate how each person was enlightened, at least three people are well known and acknowledged as having meditated in the Buddhist manner: 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 illusory. Since Adyashanti and Dharma Master Hui-Neng are enlightened in the Buddhist way, they must verify the illusory nature of the universe upon enlightenment. Furthermore, to verify that the universe is illusory, everything in the universe deemed “physical” should disappear upon their enlightenment. In other words, 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. His description doesn’t need translation from ancient Chinese, and his use of modern 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 “physical” 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, Adyashanti’s answer to “What is the nature of self?” is “awareness,” which, in his own words, is “a state of being.” Indeed, this is what Buddha teaches: the cosmos’s Ultimate Reality is awareness. Defined as a quiescent mentality, awareness is the Ultimate Reality because, being quiescent, the reality it represents is always the same. In Buddhism, a reality can be the Ultimate only if its “realness” never changes.
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.
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. In other words, the Buddha wants humans to live a life that never ends, i.e., an everlasting life.
You may rightfully wonder: how can that be reversed? Answering that question in detail is beyond the scope of this post. However, let’s get a hint of it by looking a little deeper at what happens to Adyashanti after his enlightenment. At the time of his enlightenment, he is aware that his “physical” body has disappeared. However, when he wakes from his meditative state, his “physical” body reappears.
In other words, enlightenment enables a person to switch his “physical” body on and off at will. When he wants his “physical” body to disappear, he meditates and makes his mind quiescent. When he wakes up and the mind becomes active, his “physical” body reappears. In other words, Arhats have the power of mind over body.
In his doctrine known as parinamikajaramarana (Chinese: 變易生死), the Buddha teaches that an Arhat no longer exists with a physical body, but with a mind-made body (Romanized Sanskrit: manomayakaya; Chinese: 意生身), and that he can “change his appearance or extend his lifespan indefinitely.”
Indeed, this is why Buddhism exists. Buddhism exists because the Buddha wants everyone to live a life that lasts for eons upon eons, as he enjoys. Without a doubt, what seems inconceivable in the world deemed “physical” is very much possible in a world where there is Nothing but Mentality, and anything deemed “physical” is actually illusory.
So, why is understanding “What Exists?” important? It is because, without understanding “What Exists?”, one can never comprehend that what seems impossible in a universe deemed “physical” is very much possible in a universe where there is Nothing but Mentality and what is deemed “physical” is actually illusory. The journey in Buddhism starts with understanding it through enlightenment. Only then can anyone have the power of mind over body and live a life without existential suffering when death no longer inevitably follows birth.
In the next post, we will discuss humanity’s struggle to understand the nature of reality from pre-Socratic Greece to 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.
In the meantime, if you are truly interested in understanding what happens to your life when you have the power of mind over body, I highly recommend you start 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.
