Dexing wrote:
How on earth did you arrive at that conclusion? Rereading my own post I have no idea. Unless I misunderstood your original question.
I asked the question “If the characteristics are created by mind, and 1,000,000 people perceive a table and 99% of them (excepting those who are colour blind) perceive it as blue, why is it that they perceive the same characteristic each with their own minds?”
Rereading your reply I see you are saying that humans perceive the table as blue because of their collective kamma as human beings whereas we can’t really say how animals or devas perceive it because they have a different collective kamma. I think it’s safe to say that animals perceive it, for example, as I’ve never seen my dog walk through a table, (though maybe he just walks around it when I’m looking just to humour my collective kamma), don’t know about devas though..
Anyway, this sounds more plausible than my original interpretation of it.
So to back the truck up a bit, hopefully I’m not oversimplifying things too much, my understanding of your position is that what is unique about a Bodhisattva from your point of view is that he/she has come to a realisation that everything is illusion.
The more usual Mahayana definition is that a Bodhisattva is someone who has postponed his/her enlightenment in order to save all sentient beings. I’m not sure if this is still in the mix from your point of view because of course if everything is an illusion then there are no sentient beings to save anyway. Come to think of it everything is an illusion there is no Bodhisattva to be to have such a realisation anyway, nothing that wakes up and realises it was all an illusion.
So what do we understand about illusion? A magic trick could be an illusion, a mirage in the desert could be an illusion, a tv show could be an illusion (in that it’s not really happening in my room), a dream could be an illusion.
One of the most obvious characteristics of all these things that people would normally call illusion are that they have an illusee, there is somebody or something that is illused.
So my question is that if everything is an illusion then who or what is the illusee?