DJKR on dualism 4.4.2011 [excerpt from DJKR's commentary on the Parting from the Four Attachments, Nepal 2009, from Talk 10: ] ... We tend to forget that from the time we got out of bed this morning until the time we go to bed this evening, whatever we will have experienced today, including all the faces, breakfast, our friends and family, the traffic, messages in our inbox, phone calls we made and the conversations we had, all are the stuff of illusion. Tonight, all of our experiences will be seen in hindsight to have amounted to nothing more than an incessant stream of confusion and that's all. We shouldn't regard dualism as just some vague abstract idea. Dualism is the figurative junk food that our minds are ingesting on a daily basis. And this steady diet of dualism has made our confusion so fat and so large and so real, so to speak. Out of our confusion we evolve a skin of chronic attachment, and from this chronic clinging to self, we evolve a second skin of insecurity that is always present. Of course, self has good reason to be insecure since, as Chandrakirti points out, the self is a baseless thing. After all, "self" is just a label that we give to a transitory collection of the five unstable aggregates or skandhas that compose a self: form, feeling, perception, karmic formation and consciousness. That's all self is, a never-ending process of mutating and evolving aspects of this fragile and volatile self. And it is on this shaky basis that we confer the honorific title of "I". So, naturally, self is defensive and insecure, because so-called self is only a constantly changing and re-arranging set of mental factors. We always try to escape from this worried and nervous state of mind by diverting our attention and amusing ourselves with endless, mind-numbing distractions. This constant nervousness and worry and insecurity are so unbearably intense that we resort to sedatives and painkillers of mindless entertainment. We take many many pills of distraction to keep our insecurities out of sight and out of mind... [Dawa Choga offers this poignant gem from Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the parinirvana of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. May all beings understand the truth.]