Lama Zopa Rinpoche

As I have mentioned, for a buddha, after the mere imputation, the I appears as merely
labeled by the mind, however, this does not happen for sentient beings unless they are in
meditative equipoise. Otherwise, it appears as existing from its own side. For us, in the first
moment it appears as merely imputed by the mind, but in the next moment it appears as
existing from its own side. That is a hallucination, a total hallucination. We are completely
hallucinating.
I am not saying this because it is an interesting subject worthy of intellectual discussion. This
is the real situation we are faced with. It is a big mistake—the biggest mistake—that we make,
to see things as existing from their own side, existing by themselves, as truly existing. To use
ordinary language, things appear real to us, real from there.
This ignorance is a hallucination; it decorates an object. I find this a very interesting way of
describing it. This is how it happens. Past ignorance has left an imprint on the mind and that
negative imprint decorates, projects, the hallucination, making the I appear as real.
Whatever the object of the mind is—the I, the action, the object, form, sound, smell, taste,
tangible object—the whole thing appears to us as real. There is a real car, a real road, a real
sky, a real shop, real ice cream, real money. On the road there is a real red light, a real yellow
light, a real green light. In the real gompa there are real flowers, real thangkas, real statues.
Everything is real from over there.
It is a creation, a projection, merely imputed by our mind, but we have no idea of that. We
have no idea that it is only a hallucination coming from over there. We see it from there as
real. This “real” thing does not exist; it has never existed. It has never come into existence
and it does not exist now.
The whole thing is a hallucination. From morning to night it’s like that. Since we were born
until our death, our whole life—whatever we do, wherever we travel—the whole thing, the
objects of our senses, including the I, appear as real from there. Everything we experience,
including the real I, is a hallucination.
Nothing exists in reality. Nothing exists the way it appears to exist, as real from there.
Everything is totally empty. It’s like a dream, like an illusion.
Cutting the root of samsara
If we are able to meditate in this way, looking at all this as like a dream, an illusion, a
mirage—all the different examples—then it becomes very interesting. There is nothing to
become attached to because it is not real.
For example, if we recognize a dream as a dream, there is nothing to be attached to and
there is nothing to be angry about. In a dream, somebody abuses us but if we can recognize
the dream as a dream, the abuse does not bother us at all. Similarly, some object of desire
appears in our dream, but recognizing it as just a dream, we are not agitated. Nothing
disturbs us; our mind remains utterly peaceful. Anger and attachment do not arise, so we
have a very, very interesting life.
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