What Mahayana Buddhism is really about

Mind, understood in Mahayana Buddhism, includes all states of being of the phenomenal world as well as the transcendent world. There is nothing outside of Mind, in other words. From this we can think of samsara as Mind's variance with itself even through this variance is totally unreal in the example of water and a whirlpool of water. At no time does the whirlpool inhibit the nature of water. Water is always just water in whatever form it takes. It is the same with Mind in spite of the belief of ordinary beings that the phenomenal world of 'different things and states of being' is real, so real so as to make Mind seem illusory! The teachings of Mahayana, i.e., the Mahayana Dharma, certainly goes against this false belief.

For those who are awakened such as Arhats, advanced Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, the seeming variance between Mind, itself, and its phenomenalizations, which constitute samsara, is no longer operative just as when someone realizes that the deadly snake they believed they stepped on is only a rope. One has simply removed the illusion of a deadly snake by being able to see the way things really are.

While the snake/rope illusion is easy to understand it is not so easy when it comes to seeing our phenomenal world the way it really is, such that all phenomena really don't exist in the way we imagine them to. In order to see the world the way it really is we first have to connect with Mind if only for a brief moment (it aint easy). Lacking such a connection it will be impossible to awaken from the dream we are in which causes us to believe the phenomenal world is real while the transcendent world is an illusion.

This is why good Buddhist teachers always teach Mind and the importance of realizing it, if only for the time of a finger-snap. This, by the way, is what Mahayana Buddhism is all about, the teaching of Mind.


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