Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Even though our mind, or the other person’s mind, merely labeled that empty room right
now, we do not remember.
That is totally, completely the wrong view; it is the opposite of reality. Appearing as merely
labeled by mind, that is correct. That is according to reality. But, what appears to us is totally
the opposite of reality, of how things actually exist. It is totally false. In our life there is what
is true and what is false, and that is false.
That wrong view is the basis for all the other delusions: for ignorance, attachment and anger,
for the six root delusions and the twenty secondary delusions 28 and then all the 84,000
delusions that are branches of ignorance, attachment and anger. Those wrong concepts are
the basis for all the karmic actions we create and they in turn create samsaric suffering. That
is how it works. We continuously create the oceans of samsaric suffering through this wrong
way of thinking, this wrong belief.
Illusioned by the magician, ignorance
What appears to a buddha? A buddha has totally ceased all obscurations, both the
disturbing-thought obscurations and the seeds of those, the subtle obscurations to
knowledge. Even the trace of ignorance, the negative imprint left by ignorance, has been
totally abandoned, totally ceased. So what appears to a buddha? A buddha has no projections
of the hallucination of true existence at all but still sees what we, the six realm sentient
beings, see. A buddha sees mere existence, merely labeled by mind.
When arya Sangha—arhats or arya bodhisattvas—are not in equipoise meditation directly
perceiving emptiness only, when they are in post-meditation break-time, they have the
hallucination of truly existent appearance. Their bodhicitta has this hallucination; their
compassion has this hallucination, but, unlike us, they do not believe it. Unlike us, they do
not have the belief that the hallucination is real.
It is like having crossed a hot, sunny desert and looking back to see a mirage—the
appearance of water. Because we have just come from there we know that, although the rays
of the sun reflect off the sand to give the appearance of water, there is no water there at all.
Or it is like when we are dreaming and we are able to recognize the dream as a dream while
it is happening. There is the appearance but no belief that the dream is real. There might be a
sharp object in our dream but we are not afraid because we know it cannot hurt us and so
we touch it. Of course it doesn’t hurt; it’s just a dream.
Usually we don’t have that sort of dream and while we are dreaming we think that whatever
we are dreaming about is real from its own side. This is not how arhats and arya
bodhisattvas, who are much more advanced than us, see things. When they are not in
equipoise meditation they have the hallucination of true existence but no belief in its being
real. They see true appearance as like a mirage.
When we awaken from a dream we understand that what we thought was real was just a
dream and not real at all. Unfortunately, in the daytime when we are no longer dreaming, we
still believe that which is not real to be real. Can you imagine that?
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