On the face of it, Buddhism's radical solution to dukkha seems so much more appealing. First it offers a thoroughgoing, no-compromise analysis of the problems on life, then it offers a direct, distinct method to break through the illusion of a self by working on the illusion of the self directly. Meditation, concentration and absorption train the mind. Precepts of behavior, right speech, right action, right livelihood, keep the person from adding more occasions for desire or aversion, gradually taming and then diminishing attachment to the sources of suffering. Moreover, Buddhism provides empirical signposts of progress based on direct experience, and on its deepest levels Buddhism is not dependent on a priesthood, a community, holy writ, divine providence or any other belief system. It makes no appeal to mystery or authority. One takes charge of oneself and works out one's own salvation with diligence.
Over time, following the Buddhist path, one reaches an open hearted detachment, and this leads to a life free of delusion, happy, stable and peaceful, allowing for a flowing participation in reality based on selflessness. When there's no you to seek attachments to the world of things or ideas, illusion lifts, the veil of Maya is pulled back, but when subjective experience is withdrawn there is still a world out there. Maya is the world conceived under the concept of measure. Maya and measure have a common etymology according to Allen Watts, and to be in Maya is to see the world divided up and measured into independent entities, mine and thine being only two of the possibilities. Beneath this is another reality -- the real reality -- the world which appears to the very same senses, perception and consciousness when attachment is lifted and openness reigns.
Then the senses and perceptions clear, life is received in its wholeness, and simple pleasures and pains of the body are responsive to the stimulation from the world. They rise and fall, they aren't held, nothing is possessed, no more than a mirror possesses its passing images. What ensues is a kind of pure action in which things get done, but there's no attribution of cause to a self outside the flow. Everything is connected to everything -- dependent arising -- all existence inextricably interwoven. Remove the self-nature and the oneness of creation, through non dual awareness, becomes immediately apparent and peace and understanding prevail.
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Copyright 1998 - Ira Rosenberg
Last Updated 09/18/98 (rge)