Real is Not-Real! ?

My lab partner came in and said "a problem is only a problem when you are faced with it"

The boss only identifies problems when he is personally inconvenienced, not when there is a problem for someone else. Well that might just be self centredness, but it also holds a necessary truth.

It is true that a problem is only a problem when it personally effects us. Even when we empathise we are really only putting ourself in anothers situation to imagine what problem we would face if we were them. "problemness" still centres around the personal perspective of a situation. If there is no personal perspective to a situation there is no problem. It is not a problem for example when there is a dust storm on Mars because there is no one on Mars. If there was a storm it is still not a problem until we are in some way personally connected to the situation.

Thus a problem is only a problem given a particular standpoint and perspective, it is not a universal problem that is relevant to people outside the situation. That is to say in Buddhist language that a problem is conditioned, and arises within a particular set of circumstances and to people within that situation. It is Karma that you are the person in that situation. No problem is a universal problem that can extend its influence beyond a particular situation.

So to understand a problem we also need to be in that situation, and so a problem is not a real thing that can be picked up and shown around to everyone. It stops being a problem when it is removed from its circumstances. Thus problems come and go and always will come and go and there is no solution to all problems. Progress is the myth that we are step by step solving fixed problems - like the wheel - as if these problems were of universal nature and not bound within particular situations.

This is the nature of all things - conditionality. And with conditionality and particularity comes transience and impermanence.

Now I turn my attention to the first person perspective which is the only real perspective because it understands the full significance of events as being bound to particular situations. Let us consider this from a conscious perspective.

When a problem arises it becomes very important to us. It fills our consciousness. In the extreme case a problem can seem so big that we can't see around it and it overwhelms us and we lose touch with other things. We become very lost.

In a similar way some things become very special to us and they too fill our consciousness. "My muse" is the greatest example of that in my own life, and the issue of our relationship was the greatest problem I have ever encountered.

When something is big and close up in consciousness it seems very real! It is this quality of big and close up things which leads me into serious situations. I want things to become real, very real so I bring them as close as I can and make them as big as I can. They become the most important things I can make them and they become so solid and fixed. My consciousness becomes concrete and vivid - the world is Real.

However view this from an understanding of conditionality. The larger and more close up the experience becomes the more and more localised and personal it becomes. It becomes more and more relative to my own perspective and less and less universal. The more Real it becomes the more irrelevant to others it becomes and the more un-Real it becomes!

Thus I now understand that I have been looking at everything the wrong way around! I have been seeking to solidify reality in the belief that it would be Truth by making everything incredibly personal. The whole relationship with "myy muse" which I have been remembering in the past few months was characterised by the sense of complete personal significance. I remember saying to people that I simply could not tell them about it because it was so Real and personal. But now I see the irony that in makingit that solid and Real I was actually making it Unreal! What we call tangible and experiencable is Unreal because it seems Real! That which seems Real in our-consciousness we must understand is Unreal for the very same reason!

Now this is because our experience is fixed in a particular time and space. I or Ego is a centre around which the events of the world fall and that centre is what gives them their personal perspective. But by falling around an Ego they are made at the same time Unreal.

This links together the whole syndrome of personal experience in one nexus. Particularity, Experience, Tangibility, Here and Now, Reality, Self, Identity all come together to make experience which is apparently Real but because it is Real-To-Me it must be Unreal in general.

Thus we need to look at our consciousness again and see an irony, that what is most apparent and important to us is actually least Real by definition.

Now this does not work in reverse. This is not to say that Reality now exists in the hidden, subconscious, or objective world that somehow surrounds our Unreal consciousness! We can't just infer that because what is Real is really Unreal that what is Unreal is really Real. That is non-sense and a misunderstanding of the point. What is Real is the same as what is Unreal. If you want find somthing Unreal find something that seems totally Real to you. There is the tree no doubt, but that no doubt ensures that the tree is firmly within your situation and therefore it is not in other peopes situation and so it must be Unreal.

The use of this is to understand that we are immune then from Reality! Because that which seems the most urgent and important to us, is actually not Real at all. It is localised conditioned and a mirage that can only been seen from one perspective, namely ours. Find a different perspective (i.e. be a different person, have a different Karma) and it will and DOES look different. That is the true Reality.

Now there is a final stage to travel on this journey. What I am saying here is relevant to me at the moment because I thought it today, and am writing it down today. It can't be Real because I would have written it down yesterday or a year ago. So what is happening right now is quite personal and so is conditioned and so it is not Real it is Unreal.

So the ultimate irony to grasp is that even this "raft" of an idea that Real things are actually Unreal because they are conditioned and personal itself is Unreal. The very importance that I attribute to this idea today shows that it is Unreal. That the true profound liberation that Buddha speaks of cannot be captured or fixed within any single idea of text. That the Reality that I seek is not the awareness that Real things are actually Unreal, because that is just a new awareness within my consciousness and so should be viewed as Unreal itself. It transcends everything that is momentary, it will not arise on a given day, because then it would be conditioned. I will not be writing this blog in the future and suddenly say with any meaning that I am enlightened because to think that it started today is to make it personal, centred around my own perspective and so to make it Unreal to everyone else. Enlightenment is not personal, it is not exoteric or esoteric, it cannot be placed.

So there is no new thing that will occur to me that I am to expect. There is no thing to center in my consciousness. There is no new state of consciousness, no personal thing that will make me enlightened or wise. Because all this is personal and Unreal. If anyone ever say "I" ignore them because how can anything that centres around their perspective be of use to you? And vice versa how can anything that is of use to you actually be of any use? If it is of use to You then it is Unreal.

So I am at a loss as to how to transform this irony with itself. What is the meaning of Reality is Unreal is both Real and Unreal itself?