Just to be clear, I’m trying to help you. The path you walk leads to, at best, confusion, stress, slacking off, bad habits, cherry picking, and a sad life, and, at worst, to really messing up your life. I’m going to try to explain this to you, again, in the hopes that you will be helped out of this rut you are in, but are mistaking for a vehicle.
Okay, then this means you must drop all philosophy. The exact same reasoning by which you conclude all things are mental projections undercuts this position. It self refutes. You have no valid position.
Think about it: you have the thought “all physical objects are mental projections.” Ok, if this is valid, then so is the thought, “All physical objects are mind independent.” They have the exact same amount of proof, once proof is thrown out, that is. In actuality, much more proof points to physical objects being real, and mind independent. But I digress.
The point is, there is no line of reasoning to claim all is a projection of mind that can’t also be used to claim that the mind is the illusion, and physical reality is what is real, or both are real, or neither, and so on. This extreme skepticism about reality turns the sword of doubt on mind, too. If you don’t trust that your mind is telling you to eat, and pay bills, which are mind independent (if they weren’t assumed as such, your mind would fill your belly when you get hungry, rather than telling you to go get food, etc.), you cannot trust this same mind to tell you that this very mind is real, either.
If you will say mind is not real, then, it doesn’t exist, and it cannot project anything at all. Then, you’re claim of mind projected objects is talking incoherent religious babble: all things that normally seem to exist do not exist, because they are projections of mind. This mind also does not exist.
How do you not see that this is self refuting, and extreme nihilism, to boot?
You have backed yourself into a skeptic/ajnana corner and don’t understand this. All proof, human instinct, common sense, and so on leads towards realism at least to some degree. You don’t like that, so you say all proof is invalid, it all comes from mind. Thus, mind is invalid, and cannot prove itself, either. You’ve thrown out all things that could prove the mind, and are considering mind to be proof. You cannot have one without the other. No matter, then no mind, either. Either mind and its common sense assumptions about reality are valid, to some degree, or neither are valid, you have no position whatsoever.
Even if you became able to live like in a dream, flying around, making food appear in your belly, time traveling, and whatever you can imagine, that still leads to having no position. All proofs cease to have meaning. All words cease to have meaning. Holding onto a bunch of Mahayana religious jargon about skandhas and stuff would be asinine. If all is truly unreal, then so is all this silliness. The only place to go from there is having no position at all. Or it would lead to being a god, more on this, later in the post.
Put another way:
Me: is all mind (projections of mind)?
You: Yes.
Me: Ok, is mind real and existent?
You: Yes.
Me: Then so is everything else, because all proofs for mind rely on the exact same apparatus and logic that prove physical reality. It’s like saying the metric side of a ruler is imaginary, and doesn’t exist, but the imperial side is real. Nonsense. Either the ruler is real, or it isn’t. Mind either proves both physical reality and itself, or is totally invalid, because it can think and percieve about physical reality and itself in the exact same ways.
Further, you couldn’t believe the statement “all is a projection of mind” because you’ve declared projections of mind unreal/non existent. So, that statement could not possibly be true, even if we ignore the incoherencies of the idea pointed out above.
I know you’ll say you don’t believe that, because you don’t believe mind exists, but I had to cover it, because your philosophy is all over the place. So, here’s a more likely scenario:
Me: is all mind (projections of mind)?
You: Yes.
Me: Ok, is mind real and existent?
You: No.
Me: Well, from the position that all is mind (projections of), now that mind is unreal and non existent, this literally means nothing exists whatsoever. This is a non position. It self refutes. This is a faith based position. You may as well say everything is god, and be done with it. Especially if you posit some super soul or ultimate reality beyond mind and matter, and everything, as the cause for all this illusion. Just call it god and leave off all this Buddhist jargon.
I know you’re going to continue believing these strange ideas. You don’t even understand that you’re promoting solipsism, subjective idealism, advaita vedanta, and yogacara type stuff, and then promoting extreme nihilism. So, I challenge you to prove it to yourself.
Prove it. Prove that objects are only projections of your mind. Don’t pay your electric bill. It’s a mere projection. If you truly don’t think about it, your power should stay on. When you’re hungry, visualize food into your stomach. Make yourself a hundred feet tall. Do the things you should be able to do if life is just a dream.
If you are successful, words are meaningless, proof is meaningless, nothing could possibly matter, nor have meaning. Holding onto these Mahayana ideas and announcing “All things are a projection of mind” would be absurd. You would still be hard pressed to prove that reality is unreal/non existent though lol! This would prove that things are under your control, not that they don’t exist. You’d basically prove you’re god, because surely you’d be able to do anything, and know anything. Then, you’d realize everything is real, because you, god, are real. How nice would that be?
Or, if you manage to prove things are like a dream, and you can do the above, but otherwise have to follow rules, or randomness rules your life, you’d still be unable to prove that there’s no objective reason for this. Just because it seems all random and dream like to you, doesn’t mean it actually is. You could be stuck in an illusion created by a wizard that covers up the truth, which is why there’s things you don’t control. Further, it also doesn’t prove that this random dream like quality of your reality isn’t physical, and real. If there’s anything you can’t do, and knowledge you can’t have, like what reality, then, is, you have no way to prove that these aren’t external to yourself, in some sense. The only being who could successfully, entirely refute reality, would be a god, with exponentially more knowledge and thinking capacity than we have. But they’d still have to admit they exist, and by extension, the things they create exist, too.
Since I know you’ll just argue a bunch of ideas to justify why reality isn’t real, and yet, inexplicably, reality still follows a ton of rules that are unbreakable, yet, life is a dream, just with a ton of rules, etc. I issue another challenge:
Keep this philosophy that there is no physical world and all is a projection of mind, and so on, with ZERO language, nor attention. Never think about it, write about it, read about it, talk about it, visualize it, nor anything at all. Do this for years. See if it has any existence whatsoever without you making it up, feeding it, and pretending it is true.
Your entire position is essentially Yogacara, while denying mind exists, and denying that conventional/commonsense reality exists. This relies on positing that mind exists and can be aware of itself. This, you deny, but yet again, if mind doesn’t exist, then your position is extreme nihilism, since you declared physical objects projections of mind, and mind as non existent. Here is Chandrakirti on your position, that all is just projections of mind alone. I’ve bolded a particularly relevant point:
[Refutation of a noncognized entity (reflexive awareness) as the ultimate truth]
(72) If this “dependent entity” exists in the absence of both subject and object, then who is aware of its existence? It would be unacceptable to assert that it exists unapprehended.
(73) It is not proven that [a cognition] is aware of itself. Nor can this be proven by using the subsequent memory [of a previous event as evidence], for in this case the thesis intended to substantiate your claim itself embodies an unproven premise, and therefore it cannot be admitted [as valid proof].
(76) Therefore, without [this notion of] reflexive awareness who (or what) will apprehend your dependent [form]? The actor, the object [of the action], and the action are not identical, and for this reason it is illogical to maintain that [a cognition] apprehends itself.
(77) However, if the entity which is [a manifestation of this] dependent form (paratantrarupavastu) exists without ever having been produced or cognized, then why should our opponent insist that [belief in] the son of a barren woman is irrational? What harm could the son of a barren woman inflict on him [that he has not already suffered through belief in his concept of dependent form]?
(78) And in the event that this dependent [form] in no way whatsoever exists, then what will function as the cause for the screen [of conventional truth]? All the ordered structure of everyday experience is laid waste by this clinging to a real substance inherent in our opponents philosophical views.
[The true meaning of teachings on “mind alone”]
(79) There is no means of finding peace for those walking outside the path trodden by the master Nagarjuna. Such people have strayed from the truth of the screen and from the reality [expressed in the truth of the highest meaning], and on account of this they will never be free.
(80) Conventional truth is the means, the truth of the highest meaning is the goal, and one who does not appreciate the distinction between these two treads a wrong path through his reified concepts.
(81) We [Madhyamikas] do not have the same attitude toward our [concept of] the screen as you [Yogacarins] have toward your [concept of] dependent being (paratantrabhava). With reference to the nature of everyday experience, we say: “Even though things do not exist, they exist” - and this is done for a specified purpose.
(82) [The things of the world] do not exist for the saints who have abandoned the pyschophysical aggregates and found peace. If, in a similar manner, they did not exist in the context of everyday experience, then we would not maintain that they do - even in this qualified sense.
(83) If everyday experience poses no threat to you, then you may persist in this denial of the evidence provided by such experience. Quarrel with the evidence of everyday experience, and afterward we will rely on the winner.
