Family and Nation

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya, A P J Abdulkalam
Publisher: Harper Publications India

Page 83

THE IDEA OF UNITY
69
People who believe that their thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions that can be, are called solipsists. By analysing the three states of experience-- waking, dreaming, and deep sleep-Adi Shankaracharya (788–820) established the singular Reality of Brahma, in which the soul and Brahma are one and the same. Ishvara is the manifestation of Brahma in human minds under the influence of an illusionary power called Avidya. The ‘real world is but an illusion in the mind of the observer. When the solipsist understands the maya or the illusion of the world, he escapes the mundane and reaches the state of everlasting bliss, realizing that he, the Self, is the whole Universe, thus making himself God.
In this model of Reality, Brahma plays a game of hide and seek with himself. In this game, called Lila, he plays the individual people, the birds, the rocks and forests, all separately and together, while completely forgetting that he is playing a game. At each Kalpa, he ceases the game, wakes up, applauds himself, and resumes it. So one of the main points in waking up and being enlightened is knowing that one is simply playing a game, currently acting as a human being, having an illusion of being locked within a bag of skin and separated from the whole of the cosmos.
The Buddha stated: Within this fathom-long body is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world and the path leading to the cessation of the world. Though he did not reject the occurrence of external phenomena, the Buddha focused on the illusion of Reality that is created within the mind of the perceiver by the process of ascribing permanence to impermanent phenomena, satisfaction to unsatisfying experiences, and a sense of reality to insubstantial things.