Xming I get your view that we see an idea and strive to make that idea a reality . Whatever it is . Actualise the concept .
Troy.
Your view I think is that all there is is everything . The individual self does not exist and therefore free will does not exist . So there can't be a drive towards actualisation . Also as you've said the truth is continually changing anyway so it we were to strive towards an idea by the time we got there it would be out of date and what we captured would be about to change anyway .
My own view is that we can reach a greater peace thorough letting go of trying to understand and just being but I accept your point Troy that this isn't truly letting go .
I suppose that a person naturally is at the point they are willing to let go or they aren't .
I have something like that to relate . I lost my mind , just about . Man I really did .
I'll tell you what I realised in those moments that whatever the hell I thought I knew I didn't .
Because whatever was in that jumbled mind of mind was clearly wrong .
Sometimes you know you have to be willing to tear up your view of reality and start again .
I've heard that people that have become spiritually enlightened have experienced massive trauma and maybe that's why .
Quite right, we can form an idea and then actualize the concept. But truth is not a concept, which is something rather trivial.
As for the self not being real, we must be careful: one cannot say the self doesn't exist ( because Buddha or who-not said it) and then act in daily life as if does exist. It is one thing to understand the concept of the self not existing, and quite another to not act from a center, as if a psyche does, indeed, exist.
It takes much more than an understanding of the concept. The concepts surrounding and forming the self must be actually gone. It is the very center of this construct which doesn't disappear through practice, gradually. It's there or it's not, and if it's not something else is. But one cannot say it's not as much as before, this center: it's still there, if it is and if it's not it's not. No tricks.
That's frustrating . Almost to say that you can't reach something if you want to .
Of course, Tom, that's the point: desire is limited and the unlimited can't be reached through the limited. We must understand the limitation of our instrument.