(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

In the March 01, 2009 post entitled Life is [Like] a Dream – am I missing something?, I offered this description of our ignorance of our true nature:

We’ve been caught up in some major mistake. But not the kind of mistake where we show up at somebody’s house for a party on the wrong day…..

Actually, I realized as I was walking south this past Friday on Yonge Street in Toronto that our mistake is in “showing up” at all!

“Showing up” in the sense that that we confuse what is a manufactured ego — created out various causes and specific conditions that themselves can change at any moment — with who we actually are, a collection of moments that are fleeting and impermanent. The image that I find helpful is fireworks. They arise, flash in space, and then die.

The unchanging space that underlies all changing phenomena is vast like the sky. Ego tries ad nauseum to carve out a little piece of the sky for itself. Then it has to defend this little piece of the sky. This leads to all sorts of  confusion. And wars. Wars on both the personal and national level. Wars for more territory.

We can see this very clearly in what we call The Terrible Two’s. A two-year old will scream “Mine! Mine!” if another child tries to play with his toy.

Imagine if we were walking along a sandy beach and one of the grains jumped up and said “Hey, look at me.”  We might think that grain of sand is deluded. It is trying to set itself apart from “sandness.”

Or if a pregnant moon tried to hang onto its fulness and refused to wane. It would look loony!

Here’s a closing quote from the Dalai Lama XIV from Practicing Wisdom

…It is only by generating true insight into the ultimate nature of reality that we will be able to get at the root of our confusion — our deluded way of perceiving and the suffering it gives rise to….Since all these [false views about the nature of reality and the heavy emotions and discursive thoughts that arise out of our false views] are rooted in our belief in an intrinsic existence of the world, by generating true insight into emptiness [insubstantiality, no permanent existence] we will be able to cut the root of all these delusory states.

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