[MD] som unplugged

[MarshaV]

An advantage for what?   


   "Discussing illusions plays such a big role in the Perfection of Wisdom literature because the Buddhist texts state that there is a close connection between the existence of illusion and the existence of suffering.  According to the Buddhist worldview, the existence of suffering is neither a necessary feature of the world nor the consequence of a specific fact about the past (such as the fall of Adam), but is rather due to an intellectual error that is mistaken about the way things exist.  Suffering is produced by a wrong view of the world, a view that is in fact so much part and parcel of our habitual way of thinking that we are not aware of its perspectival nature any more.  More worryingly, the mere intellectual insight into its falsity does not mean that the illusion goes away, in the same way that mere intellectual insight that the two line in the diagram below are the same length does not alter the fact that the lower line appears to be longer.

   <--------->
   >---------<

...  

   "The aim of the Buddhist enterprise is therefore not just to show that all things are like illusions because the way they appear is different from the way they are.  Its aim is to bring about a complete change in how we perceive and conceptualize phenomena.  In this way ignorance is cleared away and, one hopes, suffering will completely disappear."

	(Westerhoff, Jan, 'Twelve Examples of Illusion)  





> Marsha:
> I suggest the primary goal of RMP for the West, with his presentation of the MoQ, is to overcome a subject-object-metaphysics.  Has this topic become unplugged?
> 



 
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