In Buddhist understanding, there is an idea called ‘two truths’.
This idea is often a major source of confusion for people trying to understand Buddhism: for example, you can often hear the saying that there is ‘no Self’ taught by Buddhist teachers. Or sometimes you hear that ‘we are all interdependent’. These sound pretty good until you examine them and see that ‘If there is no self, then who is listening to this guy talk?’ or ‘if we are all interdependent, how come when I eat breakfast, it only fills ME up and not other people?
I seem to be a separate person, so what’s with this idea that I am not or that I am an illusion?
These ‘two truths’ don’t mean that there is are 2 separate truths actually, but that there is one truth with two ways of looking at them: the first is what Thich Nhat Hanh and others call Ultimate Truth.
With this way of viewing the world, we can see that I am not separate from the world, that I need air and food, and many other things to survive. That everything that I think of as mine, is actually a coming together of these many things, and then only for a temporary time.
The other way of looking at the world, the 2nd Truth if you like, is called the subjective truth and is what we experience the world as: I see the world from my perspective. It is an accumulation of all the experiences I have known, modified by all the things that have resulted in me: for example, I had a different first day of school than any of the rest of you and you did from me. But that first day of school was also made up of the experiences of the other children, the teachers, the school itself and even the school trustees and the land that the school is built on.
In this way we can start to have insight into how, even though we perceive the world from our own subjective experience, we are also part of the world in an ultimate sense.
So, from our perception, our life is very real. But from an ultimate perspective, there could be said to be an illusion of separateness.
Now, there is another way to view the world that is in alignment with both of these and I believe is a good example of how we the world is actually completely interdependent and also perceived from our own viewpoint.
Let’s close our eyes for a thought experiment.
If you imagine your own body now. You can feel the air coming into your lungs as you breathe. Pay attention to that air as air. Now, think of it as a flowing river of air particles, some oxygen, some nitrogen, some pollution. These are the things that make up the air that we breathe, along with some others. Now I invite you to think of the oxygen only. It is a substance that your body uses, that enters your lungs and spreads out throughout your body, carrying life-giving chemical reactions that bring your body nutrition.
But oxygen is made up of individual atoms. Each atom has it’s own structure made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. These look like little planets that circle the sun, but very fast. I invite you to think of the flow of air in your breath as like of crowded flow of these: little solar systems of electrons, circling their central sun-like centers, but many many of them making up the river of your breath.
Now I invite you to think of a single oxygen atom. See the electrons circling around the center. Pick an electron. Just looks like a little ball of energy, kinda bouncing in place, full of its energetic power.
Visualize an individual electron, like a little vibrating sphere.
What is an electron? Well, science has found that it actually isn’t the smallest unit but that it is in turn made up of even smaller pieces, called quarks. Think of a LEGO ball: looks like one ball, but is made up of many bricks really.
Hmmm, so you can see your breath, made up of oxygen atoms, made up of electrons and other particles, that are made up of quarks, filling your lungs.
But what are quarks made of?
Ha well, there are some ideas. But one of the most prominent currently, is that quarks aren’t made of anything themselves, but are actually like little vibrating strings in the fabric of space-time.
I invite you to think of a violin string that vibrates, imagine it in a certain way that f you look at it it looks like the fast vibrating violin string is filling a space and can look like a wave. This is the theory about what quarks are made of.
It is a wave in the air, which has an effect on the air around it: it makes vibrations which in the case of a violin we can perceive as music. In the case of quarks, these strings can make waves in what we now know of as space-time, or the foundation of reality itself.
Ok, open your eyes please.
But here’s the thing: the distances between the electrons and the center are vast: just like between our sun and earth. And these strings don’t take up any space at all. The are merely vibrations.
All the fundamental things in the universe are made of vibrating little strings in the fabric of space time.
On the one hand all that results is that the particles that we think of as something, aren’t anything at all.
AND there is a vast space between them.
So, in an Ultimate sense, reality is simply vast amounts of space, interrupted by little folds that don’t have their own substance. The universe is empty.
However, at the exact same time, I invite you to feel the chair that you are sitting on: it is made of space and nothing else. Yet, in our subjective perspective, it is a chair.
This is how reality is both and illusion and yet not, one way to approach the 2 truths understanding of buddhist teaching to understand how the world can be both an illusion and not at the same time.
Here is a video I found if that helps:
Peace, Ken