Do You Really Exist? | Buddhist Philosophy

Discover the Buddha's profound insight into the nature of reality and self. Еxplore how language creates a virtual reality, distorting our perception of the world and ourselves. Learn the Buddha's teaching of Interdependent Arising that reveals the true essence of existence beyond words and concepts. See how this wisdom can transform your life by revealing the interconnectedness of all 'things' within and without you. #buddhism #philosophy #self #spirituality #wisdom #mindfulness

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📚 Recommended Reading

▶ Walpula Rahula Thero: What the Buddha Taught
▶ Thich Nhat Hanh: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
▶ Rupert Gethin: Foundations of Buddhism

Free access to Early Buddhist scripture:

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🎶 Music

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⌛ Timestamps

01:50 Language is a virtual reality
07:28 Buddha's Interdependent Arising
12:25 Analysis of the 'self'
21:21 Using the Buddha's insight
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📝 Script

You can read the script of this video essay on the S2S website:
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Video editing by Sempiter & Simeon

[seekerseeker]

Many thanks to the S2S patrons on Patreon: Tsvetina Ivanova, RMSounds, Violeta Nedialkova, Shankar Arul, , Isaac Ng, Jonathan Allen, Mark Schwartzberg, Christopher Mailander, Albert cipriani, Pachier Virasami, Brian G, Richard Metafora, Charly H, Lydia Richards, Yipeng, Colin K, Douglas Hills, J. R. Bob Dobbs, Grey, Ivo Mihov, Hans Krueger, Vladimír Šindler, Neil Toyota, Paweł Rozumek, Scott Myers, jimsturling, Nate Reeve, Yvone Beisert, Ben Petty, The Analytical Btch, Mary J Riddle-Bevan, Jamie Bell, Leo Sebastian, Sol Diaz, Isabel, Aayush Khanna, Christopher Devlin, Krozal, Thomas Pettitt, asdas, Roxar96, Hans Krueger, Patrick White, Joshua Plummer, max, Umesh, Joel & Beth, Christopher Kempton, marie möller, Gerardo Lopez, Joanne Yoon, Erik Drewniak, Thomas Crisp, William Ward, Konstantin Petkov (Kosio), Luna, M Skellyman, Mladen R., Andrew Brown, All Nazis Are Nonces, kit cheah, marquisfleur, Matt Geise, Sylvia, Nancy Fleming, Paula Lin, JKomondy, Blaze Williams, Chris Selnes, Registar, Greg h, Ang Kaji, David Cross, Armando Hernandez, Stephen D Higgins, Annette, Armando Hernandez, Victoria Pecherska, Jörg Malzahn, Evelyn Tan, giman97, Amarnath, N, Brett Ammend, Kate Radcliffe, Jack Secker, Anil, XvGt, helen reyes, Jerald Pinson, Mike Moore, Robert C. Allen, Aaron Perry, Boris Mihaylov, Cassandra Bramucci, Thinkdriver8, gguerdrum, Bonnie Lincicome, Stanley Chan, jayplk, Sanjeevini Dutta, Niels de Jong, Iván Cámpora, Andreas, Birendra Gabadamudalige, Ven, Shane Kempton, Matthew, Rich Newsome (x2), Paolo Scalora, Paul Bernhard, Katerina Shmelkova, Alix & Michael May, Chris Holloway, Sudershan Vadehra, Sasha Solovyev, Para Te Ika O Tangaroa, Eszter, Peggy Choenchom, I wonder what those eyes are seeing, Peggy Choenchom, Sarah Curtis, Anna Oldfield! Your generous support allows me to do this work!

I would also like to thank all the channel members who support my work through YouTube! You will know them by their orange badges in the comments :)


I owe this video, like everything else I do, to the gentle and constant support of my partner. Thank you, Elly!

[gabrielkehdi]

This video has so many layers!

You know, when I was on my early studies I struggled a lot with this coded language that Buddha used for teaching . I was like “just give the answer already, man!” 😂
But as life progressed and I gathered more experience I began to understand. These topics, despite being absolutely simple, are extremely hard to understand without an active and vigorous will to learn. Simple answers would lead only to shallow debates. So yeah… do we exist? Empty is form and form is empty.

About the interdependent arising, I feel it’s also Samsara itself. This net of matter, solar systems, of needs, of constant hunger, seeking and feeding, raw necessities, birth-reproduction-death, trades, transformation, karma… being born into existence is to spin the wheel of Samsara.

And then you start to see that suffering is imbedded into existence to the core. And the more we realize that, the more suffering loses friction with our minds… we can still feel it, but it doesn’t hurt as much anymore. We begin to see that every single one of us is swimming as hard as one can to survive existence. Just a bobbly foam of life, drifting upon an infinite soup of matter.

[jino]

Yours and Doug's Dharma content have helped reduce the suffering in my life. For that I'm grateful.

[Buddham_Sharanam_Gacchami]

❤ Your videos and the teachings and the insights they contain have changed my life and my understanding of life forever. Thank you for your good work.

[glenswada]

My intellect has difficulty understanding emptiness. But your words has made it more easy for me to comprehend it better. Thank you.

[mattsinclair]

I realised recently, when I remember places I have been in the past and think about visiting them again, if I returned to that same location the place would not be the same place. What you have in your memory is absolutely unique, a one-off occurance never to be repeated. You had the experience of being in that place at that time, at that time of day, in that season. You will never have that identical feeling again. The now is really all there is, and memories of past nows

[ogt]

You’ve nailed it despite your young age 🙌🏻 Thank you.

[isabeljirash]

THANKS, THANKS, THANKS I have no words to express what you have shared just THANKS THANKS

[joesoap]

Brilliant... The biggest take away from this super deep dive is to enjoy the view...

[Gpenguin]

Another great video. Thank you! 🙏 It brings me back to the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra and the teachings within the sutra on sense perception, interdependent origination, and sunyata (“emptiness” or “voidness”). I like to remind myself that “Form is Void, and the Void is the Form.” Form (the physical and mental phenomena we perceive) is empty of inherent existence (void), and this emptiness (void) is not separate from the phenomena (form). All phenomena are devoid of intrinsic nature. I find myself going back to the Heart Sutra whenever I experience a strong feel or attachment to the perception of the experience. The moment of reflection and the letting go of that strong feel or attachment is like crossing to the other shore on the raft and letting the raft go upon reaching the other shore.

[Blackout]

iPad babies aren’t ready for this one!

[eliasrosa]

Eres maravilloso. Continúa tu trabajo y que logres lo que quieras acá o en lo más de allá.

[andycodling]

Paradoxically, I feel more complete after listening to this🤔

[shubhamreddy]

Can you make a detailed video on the nature of thought and ignorance so that we can have a deep dive into it?

[evopwrmods]

Oh my, by far a showcase of all your previous work. Kudos and much appreciated. Excellent work, so much to digest. But you've help me past small bump along my path. Many times during this video my thoughts were drawn to Orange, and Emptiness. One is coming to realize; to be empty, is to open up ones vessel for more. However if you are filled up, then one can not experience anything new or novel. Only the empty cup ever gets filled ? Many Thanks Seeker2Seeker, our Teacher...😮

[apparentbeing]

"There is no way of telling whether we are living organisms in a positive universe, or pseudo-living organisms in a negative universe.. The difference is really one merely between the two directions of time, and, though those two directions are opposite to each other, they have no physical properties which are in any way different." -William James Sidis

[nilanjandas]

A self is not a self therefore it is a Self. Thank you. How can this serve..

[AzureBat]

Not easy convincing people to give up the orgasm for weeks and months at a time, in order to be able to see through the matrix...

[LeeHounshell]

Thanks for this amazing teaching! ...possibly interesting, i came to similar conclusions through this way of thinking:

try to imagine that nothing is real and only potential exists. It seems that most investigations into the nature of reality start with the assumption that reality is "real". Very few take a counter-intuitive approach, assuming that really there is "nothing" - no space, no time, no energy/matter. no God... and then try and find any path - some way to get to "here" from nothing.

Try thinking like this... consider that our universe arises from 'math-potential'; that really there is only potential and nothing actually exists. just go with it. In our universe, time is 'relative'. There is no perceived existence (now) without it being relative to some prior perceived existence. From pure nothing, abstract set theory creates Infinity via potential. Here's how: You get there from the nothing=0, the imaginary set containing the nothing set=1, the set containing that=2, and so on. Infinity emerges from nothing using imaginary "potential". the same theory posits new infinities relative to that infinity, and those infinities relative to each other.. again and again.. for infinity! It's a recursive, infinite pattern. Higher 'levels' of infinity emerge. Aleph infinity happens. Inside these imagined potential infinities, there are subsets, patterns if you will, that consist of portions that follow any and every set of arbitrary 'rules.' Think about "filtering" the Aleph infinity potential using our 'physical laws' and constants as the 'rules'. It results in our universe history. It is purely imaginary but our universe emerges via a *relative* potential path. Regarding time, because "now" is always relative it does not need to be *real*. All possible universe configurations exist purely as subsets of the Aleph infinity potential. All possible data configurations emerge (e.g Hilbert Space just is).

TLDR: Nothing really exists. All universes are subsets of the infinite 'everything' potential using different sets of arbitrary rules. The M in M-Theory stands for Math.

This is our foundation. This is how we get to everything from nothing.
Now let's seriously consider God. All gods.

We already postulated that every possible pattern exists. All patterns are just repeating sections of "relative change" according to a set of arbitrary "rules." Using the same postulate that created our initial infinity, notice higher order dimensions create themselves from *collections* of lower level dimensions. Think of the 4th dimension (spacetime) like you might a movie. The movie is just a collection of picture frames (fixed patterns) ordered in a special sequence that gives the illusion of movement when observed quickly in that sequence. All paterns exist. So that means a "path" through a set of ordered patterns is what this universe really *is*. Think of your entire life birth-to-death imagining that each "moment" of time in your life is like a picture frame (fixed pattern) in the movie. Your experience of this life is movement from pattern to pattern, like a movie.

In higher dimensions, you can "look" at your entire life and just "see" it all at once. It sounds like a super-power, but i think would be boring, like reading the end of a novel first.

Now imagine the biggest potential pattern in the highest potential dimension. The imagined pattern would encompass everything. Because it encompasses all patterns, it must have the self-aware pattern, too. This "all encompassing" pattern is what I think of as God. God would "see" everything at once. God probably is really really bored. There's nothing to do, nothing to learn, no way to grow. ever. So what might God do? Why not pick some subset of the everything that forms a universe with planets like Earth that can support life, and then go "play the game" of being alive! -- It would be much more fun to live our illusion lives than to just see them all at once "forever". God is everyone and everything. You are God. This life is a game. Play it well.

[pointzerotwo]

I like all of your content, and thank you so much for creating it. But when you start out with a quote from Carl Sagan, it is as if you are just being fed from the Demiurge, Lucifer, or A.I.