Origins of Ignorance

  In the book From Mindfulness to Insight, Rob Nairn, Choden and Heather Regan-Addis notes how Ignorance "gives rise to the assumption that each of us is a solid, independent entity acting with free will in a world of things and people that are separate from us because they are solid and independent too" (p.110). This is so hard to analyze in a sense, because we are so used to thinking of ourselves as "solid" and somehow "separate" from what's around us. For example, we are in the habit of believing that there is an "I" with my own thoughts, feelings, impressions etc. and this distinguishes me from the world. It also gives rise to a sense of greed: thinking that things should be a certain way comes from the illusory notion of a grasping self that reaches out to the external environment and actively shapes it to one's desires. What happens when, instead of identifying with the sense of solidity, I were able to take a step back and see that the entire process of thought itself is just a constructed process that has no end point in the self? This is what the authors above invite us to explore.

   The problem of course is that once we start interacting with others, we have already fallen into the delusion of self-others, whether it's a good delusion (a good dream) or a bad delusion (a nightmare). There is already a solid sense of I that takes ownership or possession of its own thoughts and does not consider the things around it as also one's own mind. But the challenge is to take responsibility for all that happens, in the sense that all is a reflection of one's own mind. How this is done takes a lot of practice. It requires being able to see that all of this is your mind--and nothing is excluded or in the foreground that we can call a self.