The Myth of Reality

The myth of reality is the fundamental myth we live by—the granddaddy of them all. We mistakenly see the world—and ourselves—as a result of this fundamental misperception of reality. “Reality” here is both a philosophical topic and a day-to-day topic. Here we are only really interested in how the philosophical theory impacts our everyday life. Simply put, the definition of “reality” is that things appear in the way they exist. Buddhist theory posits that since we actually do not see things the way they truly exist, then we are in constant relationship—actions and reactions—with things as we incorrectly perceive them. Thus, the conclusion can be made that if we are responding to things, people, events, even ourselves, in the way they do not exist, then this has consequences. And those consequences work against our lasting happiness and peace—the goal of our life. On the flip side, having a clear understanding of how our mind works is the foundation to understanding reality, and understanding reality is the key to mental well-being and health. So, we can say that not having a correct perception or experience of reality is the root of every living being’s discontent, confusion, and conflict.

All subsequent myths, and one might say all of Buddhist thought and practice, flow from the myth of reality. It is the foundation for the entire psychological and spiritual development of the adept. It is said that Shakyamuni Buddha taught his entire corpus of teachings, over one hundred volumes, for the sole purpose of leading beings into an understanding of reality. It is the very breath of the living body of Buddhism.

So Why Talk About Anything Else?

Having stressed the importance of the understanding of the nature of reality, one could ask, “So what’s up with the other 84,000 things the Buddha taught and all those practices we’re supposed to engage with? What about those instructions in meditation, teachings on developing compassion and the laws of cause and effect, and the rest? Why didn’t the Buddha just teach this key topic and cut to the chase?”

I received my answer to this question when I was living at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. One of my duties there was to manage the annual month-long “November Course.” In those days, in the mid ‘70s, it was not easy for a Westerner to study teachings in Tibetan Buddhism because very little had been translated. There were very few qualified translators, let alone lamas who spoke English. But the founders of Kopan, Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, were unique in that they did speak English (albeit a sort of unique dialect that was learned from their hippie students), and at the request of their students, they would regularly offer teachings on the various topics of Tibetan Buddhism.

The November Course was an immersive experience that involved many hours of instruction by the lamas accompanied by many hours of meditation. In the second half of the course, participants took precepts, observed silence, and ate just a single meal each day. It was intense, to say the least. It was meant to be strict in order to foster a sense of “retreat” from one’s ordinary life. 

One day, I went to see Lama Yeshe with a concern. Some students were sneaking out of the facilities to go down the hill to get better food, a shower, and maybe smoke a cigarette or get high. These things were of course strictly forbidden during the one-month course. Feeling indignant about their behavior, I asked what I should do to try to corral these few rule-breakers and bring them back in line. As I voiced my complaints, I was sure I had a sympathetic ear with Lama Yeshe. But as was often the case during my nine years under his guidance, however, I was set straight. Lama simply looked at me and said, “People are at different levels, dear.”

The Buddha did not only teach about the nature of reality, but instead taught 84,000 different teachings because, similarly, “people are at different levels.” While understanding the nature of reality is core to breaking our misperceptions and finding a path out of suffering, people are of such different places in their development. The skillfulness of the Buddhist approach is that while the development of the insight into reality is the core practice for becoming liberated from our problems, getting to this insight is a long and gradual process. If, for example, someone is overwhelmed by distractions, as in truth all us are, then we need to attend to these distractions first so that our mind can develop at least some ability to focus on reality itself. Working on distractions like desire, attachment, irritability, anxiety, and so on can take years to get a handle on. This is why there are so many methods and interventions in Buddhist therapeutic practice. Compassion is the primary attitude that assists the awakening to reality. Many of us need a great deal of work on developing compassion. The compassion referred to in Buddhist practice, the compassion that aids the awakening of wisdom—the view of reality—is a compassion that extends to all living beings, especially the people we don’t like or feel justified in despising.

The compassion referred to in Buddhist practice, the compassion that aids the awakening of wisdom—the view of reality—is a compassion that extends to all living beings.

On a related note, His Holiness the Dalai Lama often observes how wonderful it is to have different religions and spiritual paths in the world so that there can be a system of spiritual improvement for many different kinds of people. People have such various dispositions that it is unreasonable that any one method, theory, or religion can speak to all people’s needs.

What Do We Mean by Reality?

One aspect about Buddhist teachings that I deeply appreciate is that terms need to be defined before one can have a conversation about them. We all speak about love, for instance—but what is love? When we tell someone we love them, is that the same “love” as when we say we love a pair of shoes? Is loving a beautiful sunset the same as loving our dog? I was watching a reality show the other night, and when one of the contestants got voted off by his competitors, he gave them hugs and as he was parting the show, said, “Love you guys!” Surely that isn’t the same love as that which I have for my mother! To have a dialogue about love, we have to be on the same page about what it means. The definition of love in Buddhist philosophy is actually quite simple: Love is the wish and attitude that another being experiences happiness, and the act of loving that being is the not just the attitude to wish them happiness but to ensure their happiness, even at the expense of one’s own. It is not a contrived practice, but a spontaneous and natural one that is developed first by working on it with some level of manufactured love, whether through design or fabrication. Genuine love is not so hard to understand when reflecting on a mother’s authentic and spontaneous love for her child. She doesn’t think about feeling empathy when her baby cries. It’s natural and spontaneous. This is a similar kind of love, though absent of an emotional attachment, and can be developed for all living beings. With this kind of mental development, along with the development of other healthy attitudes like compassion, equanimity, nonviolence, and others, the development of wisdom—the wisdom of reality—comes easily. Just a sidenote: As one develops these healthy mental states, wisdom deepens. As wisdom deepens, so do these other wonderful attitudes. Thus, they are “codependent.” As the well-known Buddhist saying goes, “Wisdom without compassion, and vice versa, is like a bird trying to fly with one wing.”

For our conversation about reality, the way the term will be employed here is to mean “that which exists in the way it appears.” In other words, to be “reality,” the way we perceive something—whether with our eyes, the other four senses, or our mind—has to appear to us in the exact same way it exists. There is an implication here that if it exists the way it appears, then it must appear that exact same way to everyone else, at least everyone with functioning senses and a healthy mind. Seems pretty straightforward, right?

During those many years I lived in Nepal, my father would get frustrated that I was not interested in returning to live in the United States. He would say to me, “When are you going to come back and live in the real world?” This statement was always curious to me. I would reflect on the fact that I was living in one of the poorest countries in the world, where walking down the street I would see people, some of them beggars, with diseases I’d only ever read about. I encountered people with leprosy, with tumors on their heads or faces the size of grapefruits, with elephantiasis, with scars from smallpox, and with limbs that were merely broken but with inadequate healthcare could not be reset properly. Funeral processions would weave their way down the narrow streets of the bazar with crying family and friends in tow. At the same time, there might be a mother watching the procession while she oiled and massaged her newborn. Feral dogs roamed among the vegetable and fruit sellers displaying their goods in vibrant colors next to the butcher store, which had the head of a water buffalo hanging outside the shop, displaying the shop’s goods as if it were a neon sign. The streets were dusty and dirty, but at the same time sweet incense would waft through the crowded alleyways, leading to hidden shrines and temples that might be hundreds if not thousands of years old. Here, a family having had a poor harvest would be supported by the other villagers; despite the poverty of the area, starvation was rare. And once, when I had taken a Tibetan friend to the hospital, we sat in shock as we overheard a doctor explain to a nearby patient that he had contracted rabies from a dog bite, and it was too late for the treatment to be effective. This young French couple had just come back to town from a trek in the Himalayas; evidently the gentleman had been bitten by a dog in a remote village some three or four days earlier. Now he was going to die of rabies.

Given that I bore witness to such life and death and disease every day, when my dad would make this comment, “When are you going to come back to the real world?” I would think, well, dad, this place seems pretty darn real to me. I would reflect on the fact that in Los Angeles, where I grew up, I would never see beggars on the street (this was before the homelessness crisis we now face). In fact, for me and my friends, our feet almost never touched the concrete. We’d go to the perfect beach to surf waves in an ocean straight from a fantasy while the majority of the world was looking for food. Our lives seemed straight out of Hollywood, which was just around the corner creating fantasy worlds for the silver screen and TV. We went to work to earn enough money so we could party on the weekend with our choice of drugs to “escape reality,” and yet this was considered normal “real” life. It seemed our goal was—for most of us, is—to weed out all the unpleasantness of life and increase the pleasurable aspects that feel good. But reality is more about coming to the realization that things in life are actually difficult, painful, and dissatisfying, and that our pursuit to numb this pain through pleasure seems, well, pretty unreal, and unrealistic.

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© 2025 by Karuna Cayton, 6 Myths We Live By: And How to Overcome Them. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications.