Idealism, Materialism and Zen

[Cleric K]

So far we hear only the most vague generalities concerning 'experiencing' and 'beingness' without any clue how this manifests in our T, F, W life, besides to the fact that we believe we're no longer conditioned by anything.

Because it is really impossible to describe, it's like describing the taste of tea to someone who never tried it The realization of Gnosis does not remove the conditioning right away, but slowly facilitates the diminishing of it over time when the activity of Thinking, the thought forms that it manifests and shapes, get more aligned with the unconditional aspects of its own nature (its own lawfulness). At the same time, "cognizing the cocoons of conditioning" also helps along the same process, so again, they do not contradict but complement each other.

Well, if the bolded part implies what I hope it implies, then it matches pretty well what is called intuitive thinking in the sense of PoF. Additionally, when this inner lawfulness starts to be become so apparent, so clear, that we practically begin to see how our ordinary thinking flows within these lawful curvatures, then we approach Imaginative cognition.

Think about it. When we think verbally we hear auditory sounds. What makes these sounds different from just any random sounds? It's because they are aligned along streamlines of meaning. When we think and speak we express in discrete words. But when we think we don't feel the meaning that we experience to be discontinuous. Instead, we grasp something whole in our thinking and we will it as a magnetic force line which gathers the iron filings (words) along itself. This is why it's so important to observe our thinking. Only in this way we can distinguish our inner thinking gestures which weave as continuous streamlines of meaning which cohere the iron filings along. This is the goal of exercises like the vowels, the moving light dot and so on. The goal is to gain consciousness that we're spiritually active within the smooth and continuous streamlines of meaning and that the sensory-like and discontinuous thought-perceptions only follow in suit.

When this is continued further, the inner lawfulness that you speak of, becomes more and more richer. It's not only single streamlines but whole fields with gradients, convergences, divergences, curls. These are not seen as objects that need to be thought about but are the inner lawfulness of meaning itself. In the same way as before, all the phenomena of our soul life are now seen as iron filings flowing in completely meaningful way. These panoramas of meaningful and holistic soul flow can be expressed as Imaginations. In ordinary thinking we engineer the curvature of a streamline, in Imagination we curve whole fields of streamlines. It's like we're working with superpositions of many ordinary streamlines of thinking, grasped holistically.

When we continue even further through Inspiration and Intuition, we rise through these 'unconditional' aspects and their lawfulness, within which not only the filings of our personal soul life flow but also the processes of the world (which are no longer perceived as mysterious and discontinuous sense impressions but from their inner, first-person higher order meaning hyperfields which manifest them).

[Eugene I.]

Well, if the bolded part implies what I hope it implies, then it matches pretty well what is called intuitive thinking in the sense of PoF. Additionally, when this inner lawfulness starts to be become so apparent, so clear, that we practically begin to see how our ordinary thinking flows within these lawful curvatures, then we approach Imaginative cognition.

Think about it. When we think verbally we hear auditory sounds. What makes these sounds different from just any random sounds? It's because they are aligned along streamlines of meaning. When we think and speak we express in discrete words. But when we think we don't feel the meaning that we experience to be discontinuous. Instead, we grasp something whole in our thinking and we will it as a magnetic force line which gathers the iron filings (words) along itself. This is why it's so important to observe our thinking. Only in this way we can distinguish our inner thinking gestures which weave as continuous streamlines of meaning which cohere the iron filings along. This is the goal of exercises like the vowels, the moving light dot and so on. The goal is to gain consciousness that we're spiritually active within the smooth and continuous streamlines of meaning and that the sensory-like and discontinuous thought-perceptions only follow in suit.

When this is continued further, the inner lawfulness that you speak of, becomes more and more richer. It's not only single streamlines but whole fields with gradients, convergences, divergences, curls. These are not seen as objects that need to be thought about but are the inner lawfulness of meaning itself. In the same way as before, all the phenomena of our soul life are now seen as iron filings flowing in completely meaningful way. These panoramas of meaningful and holistic soul flow can be expressed as Imaginations. In ordinary thinking we engineer the curvature of a streamline, in Imagination we curve whole fields of streamlines. It's like we're working with superpositions of many ordinary streamlines of thinking, grasped holistically.

When we continue even further through Inspiration and Intuition, we rise through these 'unconditional' aspects and their lawfulness, within which not only the filings of our personal soul life flow but also the processes of the world (which are no longer perceived as mysterious and discontinuous sense impressions but from their inner, first-person higher order meaning hyperfields which manifest them).

Right, this intuitive thinking is what knows the lawfulness of the universe of meanings of the conditioned world, as well as what cognizes the lawfulness of the existential aspect of Thinking - how and what Thinking is itself - realized through the direct knowledge/experience of Gnosis/Jnana/Kensho.

Glad we finally found common ground after so much disputing.

[AshvinP]

Well, if the bolded part implies what I hope it implies, then it matches pretty well what is called intuitive thinking in the sense of PoF. Additionally, when this inner lawfulness starts to be become so apparent, so clear, that we practically begin to see how our ordinary thinking flows within these lawful curvatures, then we approach Imaginative cognition.

Think about it. When we think verbally we hear auditory sounds. What makes these sounds different from just any random sounds? It's because they are aligned along streamlines of meaning. When we think and speak we express in discrete words. But when we think we don't feel the meaning that we experience to be discontinuous. Instead, we grasp something whole in our thinking and we will it as a magnetic force line which gathers the iron filings (words) along itself. This is why it's so important to observe our thinking. Only in this way we can distinguish our inner thinking gestures which weave as continuous streamlines of meaning which cohere the iron filings along. This is the goal of exercises like the vowels, the moving light dot and so on. The goal is to gain consciousness that we're spiritually active within the smooth and continuous streamlines of meaning and that the sensory-like and discontinuous thought-perceptions only follow in suit.

When this is continued further, the inner lawfulness that you speak of, becomes more and more richer. It's not only single streamlines but whole fields with gradients, convergences, divergences, curls. These are not seen as objects that need to be thought about but are the inner lawfulness of meaning itself. In the same way as before, all the phenomena of our soul life are now seen as iron filings flowing in completely meaningful way. These panoramas of meaningful and holistic soul flow can be expressed as Imaginations. In ordinary thinking we engineer the curvature of a streamline, in Imagination we curve whole fields of streamlines. It's like we're working with superpositions of many ordinary streamlines of thinking, grasped holistically.

When we continue even further through Inspiration and Intuition, we rise through these 'unconditional' aspects and their lawfulness, within which not only the filings of our personal soul life flow but also the processes of the world (which are no longer perceived as mysterious and discontinuous sense impressions but from their inner, first-person higher order meaning hyperfields which manifest them).

Right, this intuitive thinking is what knows the lawfulness of the universe of meanings of the conditioned world, as well as what cognizes the lawfulness of the existential aspect of Thinking - how and what Thinking is itself - realized through the direct knowledge/experience of Gnosis/Jnana/Kensho.

Glad we finally found common ground after so much disputing.

So is it safe to say you are now repudiating what is expressed below?

I don't see any problem with having beliefs, all people have beliefs. Even the assumption that other people are conscious is a metaphysical belief, so when you write "we must..." you are already assuming a belief. But there is a difference between having beliefs in an honest way (by admitting them as beliefs) and dishonest way (by lying to ourselves and others that our views are how reality actually is rather than what we believe about how it is).

So, the reality of the existence of thinking activity (the Central Topic) is unquestionable. But then you do a trick and say: "aha, so now apply the high imaginative and intuitive ability of thinking and you will experience and perceive into the depths of the meanings that are experienced by thinking", and that is where you cross the line between the given and the imagined/believed. You smuggle the content of thinking (its imaginations and ideas) as if it is an objective reality under the hood of the given fact of the existence and the activity of thinking.

[Eugene I.]

So is it safe to say you are now repudiating what is expressed below?

I don't see any problem with having beliefs, all people have beliefs. Even the assumption that other people are conscious is a metaphysical belief, so when you write "we must..." you are already assuming a belief. But there is a difference between having beliefs in an honest way (by admitting them as beliefs) and dishonest way (by lying to ourselves and others that our views are how reality actually is rather than what we believe about how it is).

So, the reality of the existence of thinking activity (the Central Topic) is unquestionable. But then you do a trick and say: "aha, so now apply the high imaginative and intuitive ability of thinking and you will experience and perceive into the depths of the meanings that are experienced by thinking", and that is where you cross the line between the given and the imagined/believed. You smuggle the content of thinking (its imaginations and ideas) as if it is an objective reality under the hood of the given fact of the existence and the activity of thinking.

I was addressing a rather different issue there. There is a collectively shared (objectified) content, which is still the content of the conditioned world of forms, and there is a content of individuated thinking activity - my own imaginations and ideas or the ones shred within a group of beings. The line between them is fuzzy, there is really no fully objective/universal and fully subjective/individuated activity, all is interconnected. There are still ideas/imaginations mostly private to us, and there are those shared within a small group, or shared in a large group (such as humanity), or shared universally. So, the question here is: if I have an imagination of some form (idea, structure etc), how do I know if it is only my individuated imagination, or if it has any degree of commonality and relevance to the universally shared reality. So, I was saying that Cleric tried to "smuggle" his intuitive ideas as being universal "under the hood" of the existential universal meanings.

For example, ancients looked at the Earth and saw/imagined it being flat, so they believed that the universal meaning/idea of the Earth is flat structure resting on whales. They honestly believed that it was how the Divine created the Earth, in other words, that was the universal idea of the Divine that manifested the creation of the actual Earth. But it turned out to be only a collective abstract idea of the group of humans that had no relevance to the way the Earth was actually constructed.

Or another example: if a composer composed some music, and I listened to it and with my musical sense cognated certain ideas/meanings of it, how do I know if those are the ideas/meanings that the composer himself had when creating the music and they are not just my own reflections and impressions of the music? Or even if they have any relevance to the composer's ideas, how close they are to that? I really can't tell unless I ask the composer and verify my impressions with him.

As Cleric said, there are abstract ideas that only exist in the realm of our individuated or group thinking (Fourier domain representations), and there are the universal ideas relevant to the world as it is actually constructed (time domain representation). But what is lacking in SS is a way to distinguish between them. When we imagine and cognize ideas that we sense and intuit from observing the world of forms, how do we know if they are not only our individuated or group ideas, but indeed have any relevance to the way these forms were created/manifested by those high-level beings who actually manifest them? This is an unresolved problem for SS, and Steiner himself failed in his application of SS many times because of this blind spot in the SS epistemological method (when he claimed his higher knowledge of some realities that in fact turned out to be only his own imaginations). SS is still lacking a way to verify that the particular results of higher-cognition activity is relevant to the universal ideal forms/meanings. Some of them may be indeed relevant, but some of them may be not, and there is no method or way existing in SS to distinguish between them. In the spiritual domain there are some meanings that we can sense to have universal or at least large-scale scope, such as Love, Beauty etc, but that intuition is not so easily applicable to the natural/elemental realm. IMO a method to verify the knowledge against reality is what distinguishes science (be it natural or spiritual) form belief systems. So, until such method is developed, Steiner's esoterism cannot be really called "science", and his followers will be destined to make the same mistakes and confuse their personal imaginations with universal truths. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing SS as a wrong approach, it definitely has merits, I'm only saying that there are still unresolved problems in it that need to be addressed.

[AshvinP]

So is it safe to say you are now repudiating what is expressed below?

I don't see any problem with having beliefs, all people have beliefs. Even the assumption that other people are conscious is a metaphysical belief, so when you write "we must..." you are already assuming a belief. But there is a difference between having beliefs in an honest way (by admitting them as beliefs) and dishonest way (by lying to ourselves and others that our views are how reality actually is rather than what we believe about how it is).

So, the reality of the existence of thinking activity (the Central Topic) is unquestionable. But then you do a trick and say: "aha, so now apply the high imaginative and intuitive ability of thinking and you will experience and perceive into the depths of the meanings that are experienced by thinking", and that is where you cross the line between the given and the imagined/believed. You smuggle the content of thinking (its imaginations and ideas) as if it is an objective reality under the hood of the given fact of the existence and the activity of thinking.

I was addressing a rather different issue there. There is a collectively shared (objectified) content, which is still the content of the conditioned world of forms, and there is a content of individuated thinking activity - my own imaginations and ideas or the ones shred within a group of beings. The line between them is fuzzy, there is really no fully objective/universal and fully subjective/individuated activity, all is interconnected. There are still ideas/imaginations mostly private to us, and there are those shared within a small group, or shared in a large group (such as humanity), or shared universally. So, the question here is: if I have an imagination of some form (idea, structure etc), how do I know if it is only my individuated imagination, or if it has any degree of commonality and relevance to the universally shared reality. So, I was saying that Cleric tried to "smuggle" his intuitive ideas as being universal "under the hood" of the existential universal meanings.

Ok, so two follow up questions:

1) In your view, where do those 'mostly private' ideas come from? Is there any explanation for how they arrive in your consciousness?

(In the post you agreed to here, Cleric was saying we can discover the lawful activity which gives rise to such ideas)

2) Are you saying we go from more 'public' to more 'private' as we go from intellectual concepts (like those of secular science - "quantum decoherence", for ex.) to imaginations, to inspirations, to intuitions, and the latter are the 'mostly private' ones?

For example, ancients looked at the Earth and saw/imagined it being flat, so they believed that the universal meaning/idea of the Earth is flat structure resting on whales. They honestly believed that it was how the Divine created the Earth, in other words, that was the universal idea of the Divine that manifested the creation of the actual Earth. But it turned out to be only a collective abstract idea of the group of humans that had no relevance to the way the Earth was actually constructed.

Yes and that is a great example to see why these ideas are not "private" or "wrong" (which implies correspondence theory of truth), but incomplete. The perceptual content which led to flat earth conclusion did not evaporate when spherical earth was discovered, but the latter made sense of the former through a more holistic understanding of that content, a better harmony of the facts. We can now understand exactly why the ancients went from their perceptual content and their mode of thinking to those flat earth conclusions. Yet now theoretical physics says space-time itself is not fundamental (in physical sense), so the spherical earth model is incomplete too! Now we must search for a higher harmony of the facts which makes sense of that incomplete understanding (and perhaps it will turn out that reintroducing perceptions of Divinity and Cosmic meaning will aid us in that scientific endeavor).

And, what if, for just one moment, we entertain the possibility that such an understanding has been reached but has not percolated into general scientific understanding yet, for many reasons (which also can be discerned), similar to how idealist metaphysical understanding of conscious experience has not percolated. If we understand the 'harmony of the facts' view of truth and allow this possibility, just for one moment, all of the criticisms above and on most other threads go out the window. There may be other criticisms which weigh against spiritual science, but the ones above are not them.

[AshvinP]

So is it safe to say you are now repudiating what is expressed below?

I was addressing a rather different issue there. There is a collectively shared (objectified) content, which is still the content of the conditioned world of forms, and there is a content of individuated thinking activity - my own imaginations and ideas or the ones shred within a group of beings. The line between them is fuzzy, there is really no fully objective/universal and fully subjective/individuated activity, all is interconnected. There are still ideas/imaginations mostly private to us, and there are those shared within a small group, or shared in a large group (such as humanity), or shared universally. So, the question here is: if I have an imagination of some form (idea, structure etc), how do I know if it is only my individuated imagination, or if it has any degree of commonality and relevance to the universally shared reality. So, I was saying that Cleric tried to "smuggle" his intuitive ideas as being universal "under the hood" of the existential universal meanings.

Ok, so two follow up questions:

1) In your view, where do those 'mostly private' ideas come from? Is there any explanation for how they arrive in your consciousness?

(In the post you agreed to here, Cleric was saying we can discover the lawful activity which gives rise to such ideas)

2) Are you saying we go from more 'public' to more 'private' as we go from intellectual concepts (like those of secular science - "quantum decoherence", for ex.) to imaginations, to inspirations, to intuitions, and the latter are the 'mostly private' ones?

For example, ancients looked at the Earth and saw/imagined it being flat, so they believed that the universal meaning/idea of the Earth is flat structure resting on whales. They honestly believed that it was how the Divine created the Earth, in other words, that was the universal idea of the Divine that manifested the creation of the actual Earth. But it turned out to be only a collective abstract idea of the group of humans that had no relevance to the way the Earth was actually constructed.

Yes and that is a great example to see why these ideas are not "private" or "wrong" (which implies correspondence theory of truth), but incomplete. The perceptual content which led to flat earth conclusion did not evaporate when spherical earth was discovered, but the latter made sense of the former through a more holistic understanding of that content, a better harmony of the facts. We can now understand exactly why the ancients went from their perceptual content and their mode of thinking to those flat earth conclusions. Yet now theoretical physics says space-time itself is not fundamental (in physical sense), so the spherical earth model is incomplete too! Now we must search for a higher harmony of the facts which makes sense of that incomplete understanding (and perhaps it will turn out that reintroducing perceptions of Divinity and Cosmic meaning will aid us in that scientific endeavor).

And, what if, for just one moment, we entertain the possibility that such an understanding has been reached but has not percolated into general scientific understanding yet, for many reasons (which also can be discerned), similar to how idealist metaphysical understanding of conscious experience has not percolated. If we understand the 'harmony of the facts' view of truth and allow this possibility, just for one moment, all of the criticisms above and on most other threads go out the window. There may be other criticisms which weigh against spiritual science, but the ones above are not them.

This quote from recent VR essay is quite relevant here too.

"In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved matrix of space...

Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world...

But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another. Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all."

-Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

[jamesmorton]

Hi jamesmorton,
I know you were responding to Cleric, but I hope you don't mind if I also share my understanding. It's a legitimate claim from Eastern and other mystical practices - and sorry if I misrepresent that, but that's my understanding - that when you negate every sensory perception, feeling, and even every concept, nothing remains. This means that if you peel back creation to its core, you find nothing at that core. That's why your master indicated that as long as you still "know", you are still not at the "center", and you are still in the conditioned world.
That's all well. But, as I'm understanding Cleric from these and other posts, his point is that even though that is true, the world (including our everyday world with its sensory perceptions, our inner world of feelings and cognition, and also the spiritual world only experienced rarely, if at all, by most people) is there, and it works according to principles - if it didn't, it would just be a random chaotic jumble of experiential states. So if I understand correctly, what Cleric means is - and I think it's a legitimate point - that all right, it's great that you can now peel back existence to its core (or the lack of such core), you can get an insight into the conditioned nature of things, but you still don't know - and, as you admitted, you don't think it's possible to know - what mechanisms/principles CREATE this conditioned world. You just accept it as it is.
I think what Cleric is pointing at is that it's not impossible to gain insight on these mechanisms, and we are not stuck just saying "oh, Maya is what it is, you shouldn't care about how it works".
Also, I find it a bit illogical that even though your point is that you can ultimately know nothing, you still dismiss, without consideration, Cleric's thoughts as "fantasy", while if we use your logic, then nothing is more fantasy or real than anything else.

Hello Hedge90,
You're perfectly welcome to join the discussion as far as I'm concerned. In respect to the above, at no time in Buddhist practice is any sensory perception negated or suppressed. In fact, one must use one's sensory perceptions (by focusing on them) to keep from getting emotionally or intellectually entangled with one's thoughts, which would inhibit samadhi. I think it would be impossible to practice zazen in a sensory deprivation chamber.

Your understanding of the meaning of the exchange I had with Harada Roshi is incorrect. I haven't read what other people had to say yet, but I'm sure they're the same. Harada Roshi was testing me, of course. What he meant by "center" was the sense of a center, essence, individual existence, etc. that people normally have in regard to all things that they attach to or try to grasp. By my response, I tried to express that each individual existence was also universal at the same time. By saying that what I said was true, he meant that my understanding was correct in that respect, but that exchange happened when I was quite young. I had already managed to understand the nature of Zen practice, but it take years for habits of mind to die down. He saw that I was still attached to an idea of myself and everything else, so he said that I knew myself and I knew the world. In this discussion I see a lot of blind attachment to ideas and things that really have no substance. Buddhist practice, including samadhi, provides no information as to what really exists or how it comes to be or ceases to be. These things have no handles on them and it is a mistake, I think, to want to try to know them before one has even freed oneself from delusion.That's why I use the word "fantasy. BK's talk of "dashboards", etc, is really just a matter of presenting useful but tentative metaphors to counter the arguments of materialism, I think. I have no objection to this at all.
Your idea of "nothing at the core" is quite correct, but it's a "nothing" that spreads out and consumes the entire universe in a shining new mode of existence.

[Eugene I.]

And, what if, for just one moment, we entertain the possibility that such an understanding has been reached but has not percolated into general scientific understanding yet, for many reasons (which also can be discerned), similar to how idealist metaphysical understanding of conscious experience has not percolated. If we understand the 'harmony of the facts' view of truth and allow this possibility, just for one moment, all of the criticisms above and on most other threads go out the window. There may be other criticisms which weigh against spiritual science, but the ones above are not them.

Yeah, we discussed that with Cleric already. There is no guarantee that our ideas have any relevance to the ideas of the creators even if our ideas comply with the 'harmony of the facts'. The Creator might have an idea of spherical Earth when he created the universe, or he might just have an idea of the Schrodinger equation, and then the spherical Earth just developed as a natural consequence of the underlying idea (of the Schrodinger equation).

[AshvinP]

And, what if, for just one moment, we entertain the possibility that such an understanding has been reached but has not percolated into general scientific understanding yet, for many reasons (which also can be discerned), similar to how idealist metaphysical understanding of conscious experience has not percolated. If we understand the 'harmony of the facts' view of truth and allow this possibility, just for one moment, all of the criticisms above and on most other threads go out the window. There may be other criticisms which weigh against spiritual science, but the ones above are not them.

Yeah, we discussed that with Cleric already. There is no guarantee that our ideas have any relevance to the ideas of the creators even if our ideas comply with the 'harmony of the facts'. The Creator might have an idea of spherical Earth when he created the universe, or he might just have an idea of the Schrodinger equation, and then the spherical Earth just developed as a natural consequence of the underlying idea (of the Schrodinger equation).

I am not speaking of "creators" or any external agencies, only our own human ideations in relation to the progression of scientific knowledge. I also don't understand how the "Schrodinger equation" or any of the ideas nested within it could be free-floating idea-blobs, i.e. not living organisms and their spiritual activity. But, anyway, I am still interested in your answers to my first two follow up questions.

[Hedge90]

Hello Hedge90,
You're perfectly welcome to join the discussion as far as I'm concerned. In respect to the above, at no time in Buddhist practice is any sensory perception negated or suppressed. In fact, one must use one's sensory perceptions (by focusing on them) to keep from getting emotionally or intellectually entangled with one's thoughts, which would inhibit samadhi. I think it would be impossible to practice zazen in a sensory deprivation chamber.

Your understanding of the meaning of the exchange I had with Harada Roshi is incorrect. I haven't read what other people had to say yet, but I'm sure they're the same. Harada Roshi was testing me, of course. What he meant by "center" was the sense of a center, essence, individual existence, etc. that people normally have in regard to all things that they attach to or try to grasp. By my response, I tried to express that each individual existence was also universal at the same time. By saying that what I said was true, he meant that my understanding was correct in that respect, but that exchange happened when I was quite young. I had already managed to understand the nature of Zen practice, but it take years for habits of mind to die down. He saw that I was still attached to an idea of myself and everything else, so he said that I knew myself and I knew the world. In this discussion I see a lot of blind attachment to ideas and things that really have no substance. Buddhist practice, including samadhi, provides no information as to what really exists or how it comes to be or ceases to be. These things have no handles on them and it is a mistake, I think, to want to try to know them before one has even freed oneself from delusion.That's why I use the word "fantasy. BK's talk of "dashboards", etc, is really just a matter of presenting useful but tentative metaphors to counter the arguments of materialism, I think. I have no objection to this at all.
Your idea of "nothing at the core" is quite correct, but it's a "nothing" that spreads out and consumes the entire universe in a shining new mode of existence.

Thanks for your clarification James. By negation I meant that practitioners in Samadhi don't see any of those things as a separate thing, realising that every name or distinction is ultimately illusory.
The rest of what you wrote is in line with what I understand the Buddhist way to aim at: you are not interested in examining how the illusion works, you only intend to realise THAT it is an illusion. And I have no problem with that. My point is simply that the fact that you can realise that does not negate the fact that the illusion is there, and things happen/flow in an ordered manner. So why is it unreasonable to venture to also examine that aspect of existence? Why only be concerned with experiencing Being, and not look at what Becoming is and how it is taking place?