This world is a simulation: Maya

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Alan Watts (alanwatts.org)

This is all unreal in more than one sense: Plato's cave allegory, the Buddha's maya.

.

I'm not a fraud. I'm rich, baby! Who paid you?

CON: How can anybody seriously say that this world -- solid as it is and totally real -- is a "simulation"? Elon Musk is a tool who lies about his adventures with Space X and calls a detractor he's mad at a "pedo" (molester).

The Wheel to Freedom

PRO: But Musk is not the only one who says this life, this world around us, is a "simulation." Doesn't everyone have the sense that there's something unreal going on here? What is the "proof" we're dreaming?

We wake up. So if we were to wake up from a dream-within-a-dream we would say, "Aha! We were just dreaming!" But we would still be dreaming.

What does the "Awakened One," the Buddha, say will happen when we awaken from this illusion, this maya? He says that in retrospect this will all seem like a dream to us. It was all unreal, insubstantial, painful and misleading. This is a dream, this is an illusion, this is maya -- not at all what it seems to be.

What does it seem to be?

1. It seems to be permanent when it's not.
2. It seems to be able to satisfy us when it cannot.
3. It seems to be personal when it is not. It is all changing, unsatisfactory (disappointing), and impersonal (devoid of an inside-self experiencing an outside-world).

What is it actually?

O, Elon, exhale and BE at peace.

• This simulation, this unreal we call real, has Three Universal Characteristics. Seeing them causes one to "wake up." The alternating "painful nightmare-pleasant dream" (called samsara) is thereby dispelled, and all is well. That awakened state is enlightenment (bodhi) that leads to peace (nirvana).