Oakville Zen Meditation
Ignore ignorance will cause suffering
There is a big difference between ignorance in its common sense and its meaning in Zen Buddhist sense.
In the common sense of the word, ignorance is being unaware, lacking in general knowledge or understanding.
This common kind of ignorance lead to division, discrimination, derision, hate and conflict when it is applied to people who seem to be different from us regarding ethnicities, cultures, beliefs, sexual orientations, social status, and intelligence.
Because of our ignorance we imagine that the problems and threats rest in those we perceive as different from us, rather than coming from our own faulty perception.
In the Zen Buddhist the sense of the word, rather than been a general lack of understanding, ignorance is more specific.
It is the inability to differentiate genuine realities of self and surroundings from fictional reality that I will call “unreal reality” or fake reality. This “ignorance” is one of the 3 poisons causing suffering beside ongoing desires and hatred.
Fake and deceptive news are the 24/7reality of our modern Internet world.
But fake reality or fictional reality is not new. It exists since humans are on this planet for the last 1000,000 years and fictional reality is mind-made.
Our mind is the most powerful “make it up” fake news media ever created.
We are continually living in a sort of dream worlds made of various space-times, events and people.
Here are only few examples of mind-made of “unreal reality”. or mental illusion and delusion.
We believe that:
2) We are pretty well controlling our life.
3) That almost everything is permanent.
4)That past and future are real. Only the present moment is real.
5) That accumulation of goods means the accumulation of happiness or “ the more the better”
6) Our thoughts as truth. Some of them are, most of them are just ego-centered wishful thinking or acquired values, opinions, and judgments from experiences.
7) Our judgments about events, things and people are right until proven otherwise. Unfortunately, our ideas, opinion, and judgments are mostly born from our emotional mind rather from evidence-based, pragmatic, and rational thinking.
8) That permanent happiness is possible when coming from the outside world.
Final words:
We don’t have to surf the Internet to read about fake news and virtual reality.
Just watch your thoughts and emotions on a regular basis and ask yourself these 2 question:
“ How this current thought is reflecting genuine reality or just a fictional one?
“ Is this thought has positive impact or is detrimental to my serenity”?
Thank you
