Have you watched the Hollywood blockbuster " The Matrix " that is popular all over the world? After the film was broadcast, it was called "Dharma movie" by some western audiences. Many viewers think that the theme of this movie shows the wisdom of spiritual practice and enlightenment, and the plot in the film is an allegory of spiritual practice.
If life is a dream, will you choose liberation or sinking?
The protagonist of this movie Neo suddenly discovered that the real world is just a created dream, and this dream is a deliberately crafted illusion. And everyone's real body is packed in boxes, and everyone in each box sleeps in a dream.
To find out the truth, the protagonist must completely break this dream and return to the fundamental truth. So Neo got two options: two pills, one red and the other blue. Take the blue pill and return to the dream world; take the red pill to break the shackles of the illusion.
If you were the protagonist, how would you choose?
This is actually a very harsh choice, whether to choose to continue to sleep in an illusion, or to choose a free life full of truth?
The protagonist finally chose the red pill fearlessly.
So, with the release of this movie, many dedicated audiences expressed their firm desire to practice with the line "I choose the red pill" in the film.
Is life really an illusion?
The famous American evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright wrote in his book "Insights":
Natural selection ultimately cares about only one thing, which is to pass genes to the next generation. The traits that are conducive to the spread of genes flourish, while the unfavorable traits are forgotten in the corner.These characteristics that are conducive to gene transmission have become structures and algorithms solidified in our minds, and they determine our daily behavior.
The author said: The thoughts, emotions, and perceptions in the brain sometimes show us that they are not the real world. Our brain has many characteristics, one of which is to deceive us.
2500 years ago Buddha said: The various sensory pleasures that we are deeply obsessed with are just fleeting pleasures. The pleasure we seek will quickly disappear, and then make us crave more.
For example: eating junk food will give us short-term satisfaction, but after a few minutes, it will make us feel anxious for more junk food. We spend time pursuing the next satisfying thing: the next junk food, the next love, the next job promotion, the next online shopping, etc. But the excitement will always fade, and it will always make us crave more-we will never be satisfied.
Robert Wright said in the book that under the design of natural selection, pleasure cannot last for a long time. Because if the pleasure doesn't fade, we won't have to pursue the next time. Our first meal will be our last meal, because there will be no hunger at all. It can be seen that natural selection only hopes that we will continue to pursue more pleasure.
The brain illusion of scientific discovery
Scientists have already discovered a neurotransmitter: dopamine . When the brain secretes dopamine, people will feel pleasure.
When you eat a certain kind of food for the first time, the moment you taste delicious on the tip of your tongue, dopamine will be secreted in large quantities, and you will feel the peak pleasure. Next, when you see this kind of food again, the dopamine in your mind will be secreted in large quantities before you taste it, but the secretion value will begin to decrease rapidly when you taste it.
Dopamine secretes a lot before eating because of the expectation for more pleasure,The decrease in dopamine secretion after eating is, to some extent, because of the collapse of expectations, or a certain biochemical response to excessive expectations. If you have this kind of expectation—the pleasure of expectation is stronger than the pleasure of actually eating—then you are in an illusion, or misleading.
We have all kinds of emotions that we think are very real, emotions, anger, sorrow, love, hatred, and hatred. These emotions may only provide comfort for a short period of time, and will corrode a person's character in the long run. You may hate yourself because of this, you may become greedy, and have the urge to buy, eat or drink, and the degree of this impulse far exceeds your actual needs.
Robert Wright said in the book that our emotions are actually similar to an illusion.
The path of spiritual practice may be a kind of resistance to nature
Since natural design has implanted illusions to mislead us, can spiritual practice be considered as a design against nature?
In the movie "The Matrix", the goal of the protagonist, Neo, is very clear, that is, to resist and defeat the ultimate enemy that creates and controls the entire dream-the robot emperor.
So who is our enemy in reality?
Robert Wright wrote in his book:
"Natural selection, like the robot king, designed hallucinations to control us, and implanted these hallucinations into our brains. Natural selection imposes hallucinations on us, It is to enslave us and achieve its purpose. Its purpose is of course to pass genes to the next generation. This is the core of the natural selection value system and the guiding standard for designing the human brain. We have to be free from control. This is also the case. It means that our first task is to get free from the illusion that controls us.”
So the author finally put forward a point: imagines the path of spiritual enlightenment as a resistance to natural selection.
Is this really the case? This view may not be recognized by everyone, but it is indeed another novel perspective, a more modern scientific interpretation,Maybe it can give us a deeper level of inspiration.
2500 years later, the great wisdom of Sakyamuni is still enlightening people.
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