Life as Illusion

One of the things you hear in an introduction to "Buddhist philosophy" - in my case, in high school - is that we and our lives are illusions, that we don't exist, that everything is nothingness. This view of reality doesn't easily square with our everyday notions, and made me wonder what ever made anyone propound it as true. Now, however, I've been meditating long enough to have some different ideas of what these things mean.

First off, let me say that they are not the points of dogma, like the divinity of Christ or something, that I had originally thought they were. They are simply efforts to describe in language "what is" as sensed by generations of practitioners. They are not things I can truly explain in the usual sense of "explanations"; they can only be "seen directly" via meditation. My parents are scientists, and I approach this stuff with that kind of skepticism, a sort of experimental experiential ontology. That said, let me add to those efforts at describing "what is", based on my limited awareness.

We all run around very sure that our immediate perceptions of our lives are the final word. But as I have meditated more, I have observed now and then (often not during meditation) that what we usually take as reality is sort of a surface reflection of something much different and more universal. My thoughts, sensations, feelings, and actions are not the units I had thought they were, but instead, all have the same fundamental character to them: Original Nature, Original Mind, Buddha Nature, whatever words you want to use. Don't get me wrong. Except for those moments of insight, I still live my life in the same mental space as everyone else. Seeing those sorts of things does, however, change the way I regard my life, even if "regarding" something is still relating to it on its surface level.

This all leaves my usual self feeling rather perplexed. "You mean I'm an illusion?," it says. "Then what else is out there?", it wants to know. The only answer it gets seems to be that it will get no answer it can understand and accept, that there is no way to look and understand, because those actions themselves are illusory. "How then to proceed?," it asks. I'm told there is no way to proceed, and no need to do so. There is only existence as it is at each moment. I'll let you know when I get there.