According to EBTs, what is the "ground" of reality, or the ultimate buildings blocks from which all reality is made out of?

The Watercooler
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Also do EBTs promote non-dualism, including of substance non-dualism?

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I think it’s more like dependent origination, of which you can find both mind and matter in it.

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The EBTs, AFAIK, do not posit any such building blocks. The Buddha also doesn’t seem interested in that sort of project – finding foundations from which reality/everything can be derived.

And like, to me at least it seems the ground of reality – whatever it is if it even exists – is fairly irrelevant? How would it matter to us practically in our daily lives? :nerd_face:

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Welcome, @magic_mahou :pray:

The first jhana is already non-duality, that is why many mystics of other spirtual paths say that ”All is one.”

It is the same reason we find such emphasis on monotheism in other religions:

There are sentient beings that are diverse in body and unified in perception, such as the gods reborn in Brahmā’s Host through the first absorption.
DN 15

Beings like Brahmā’s Host have not created our mind/awareness/perception since these have no creator, nor a conceivable beginning.

But these creator gods are responsible for the creation of the bodies that the beings in Kama Loka inhabit. Be it animal bodies, human bodies, ghosts or devas and so on, who have their non-created mind/awareness/perception attached to a creation, the body.

The three worlds Kama Loka, Rupa Loka and Arupa Loka are distinctly different and within these worlds the various realms are also very different to eachother, so to answer your question in a very generalized way - Mind is the building block and ground of reality.

Unseen beings have highly developed minds and supernatural abilities we humans would have a hard time to even fathom. Even humans who meditate can manipulate matter (the elements) with their mind.

Dependent Origination is a unique teaching exclusive to buddhism and can’t be applied to explaning the relationship between mind and matter.

The first link “Ignorance” (Avijjā) in Dependent Origination is ignorance regarding The 4 Noble Truths and The Buddha’s teaching.

The word Avijjā is the opposite of Vijjā, which means higher knowledge; science.

Vijjā is a general, popular term for lore in the old sense, science, study, esp. study as a practice of some art, practical knowledge; but also mysterious knowledge.

So a better translation of Avijjā ought to be ”non-method”, not having a proper approach or method.

Otherwise some might imagine that ignorance is the root cause of everything and the building block:

From this comes such views as the brahma gods not having any creative abilities at all (which they clearly do) or that evil deeds commited are only due to “ignorance”, but intentional evil deeds can’t be said to be because of ignorance.

  • Is the coding, software, servers and computers used to run this website all made out of ignorance? :wink:
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You may want to look in the Abidhamma for answers to these questions, altough I am not sure it offers concise answers (I haven’t looked into it that much). If interested I recommend Bhikkhu Bodhi’s materials.

Im(vh)o EBT are not reconcilable philosophically and offer varying and even contradicting viewpoints (possibly pointing at an evolution of the canon).

The stance you take on certain issues based on your interpretion of these texts (eg the nature of Nibbana) may put you both in the monist or dualist camp according to its ramifications.

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MN 1 deals with this exact question. The answer is: there isn’t. There isn’t a Brahman emanating out the universe or anything. Even Nirvana isn’t the grounds of reality

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The Buddha avoids to make metaphysical statements, just describes experience. And non-metaphisically the basic fundamental existential determination is consciousness. No consciousness - no experience. It is of course subjective approach. It doesn’t mean that observer let’s say God, created the moon, which without being observed would physically disappear, but merely that observed field and observer are inseparable.

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Dependent origination is a process, not a “thing” or a “building block”/“ground” of reality.

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Thank you very much!

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One thing we have to wonder. Is there such a thing as a thing?

How do you define and differentiate thing vs process?

Process is impermanent? All conditioned things are impermanent, so if the difference between thing and process is that process is impermanent, then there’s no such thing as thing, there are only processes. That’s the insight into impermanence.

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Thank you for your answer, I will have to spend quite a bit of time thinking about it! I appreciate it!

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What do you mean? Are these bodies not the result of a human egg and sperm?

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What does this mean?

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In short I’ve posted that you might be looking for the 5 spiritual faculties and their respective powers, namely: faith, energy, awareness, samadhi, wisdom. Since I lacked more proof, I posted some verse from Bible which stated that by wisdom the earth’s foundation was laid by the Lord, and some others which caused the post to be flagged.

However, now I got an additional idea about the four brahmaviharas as well that you might consider too: namely abiding in love, compassion, rejoicing and equanimity. The main reason for this is because abiding in these temporarily is considered a temporal freedom in the Suttas and following a proper practice. It is a type of freedom because it is free from greed, desire, hate, delusion, etc. However, you could categorize these under samadhi too, I think.

What do you think about these?

Or maybe you might like to read “MN115 Many Elements”:

  • elements of earth, water, fire, air, space, and viññāáč‡adhātu
  • elements of pleasure, pain, happiness, sadness, equanimity, and ignorance
  • elements of sensuality and renunciation, malice and good will, and cruelty and harmlessness
  • elements of the sensual realm, the realm of luminous form, and the formless realm
  • the conditioned element and the unconditioned element

Or if you wished for answers apart from EBT and different traditions the answer would not be about what but about who.

And btw, regarding you name, hope you do not do or study things related to “magic” as only studying it can be harmful.

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Here’s Gautama’s description of his attainment of “the solitude of mind that is signless”, and of his subsequent experience. He emphasizes that his was a “realization of emptiness”, and of dependent causation (as in ‘that being, this is’):


And again, Ananda, [an individual], not attending to the perception of the plane of no-thing, not attending to the perception of the plane of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, attends to the solitude of mind that is signless. [Their] mind is satisfied with, pleased with, set on and freed in the concentration of mind that is signless. [They] comprehends thus, ‘This concentration of mind that is signless is effected and thought out. But whatever is effected and thought out, that is impermanent, it is liable to stopping.’ When [the individual] knows this thus, sees this thus, [their] mind is freed from the canker of sense-pleasures and [their] mind is freed from the canker of becoming and [their] mind is freed from the canker of ignorance. In freedom is the knowledge that [one] is freed and [one] comprehends: “Destroyed is birth, brought to a close the (holy)-faring, done is what was to be done, there is no more of being such or so’. [They] comprehend thus: “The disturbances there might be resulting from the canker of sense-pleasures do not exist here; the disturbances there might be resulting from the canker of becoming do not exist here; the disturbances there might be resulting from the canker of ignorance do not exist here. And there is only this degree of disturbance, that is to say the six sensory fields that, conditioned by life, are grounded on this body itself. [One] regards that which is not there as empty of it. But in regard to what remains [one] comprehends: ‘That being, this is.’ Thus, Ananda, this comes to be for [such a one] a true, not mistaken, utterly purified and incomparably highest realisation of emptiness.

(“Lesser Discourse on Emptiness”, Culasunnatasutta, Pali Text Society MN III 121 vol III p 151-2)

He does discuss the four elements, sorry I can’t quote you chapter and verse on that, but he was hardly unique in characterizing the building blocks of physical reality that way. Ok, am7 has culled some of the elemental “building blocks” in a post above, many more than I remembered!

The description of the “highest realization of emptiness”, though, that is unique in the literature of the world, so far as I know.

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Ah, I see, thanks for the clarification. I was confused as to why your post was flagged since I didn’t see it when you posted it.

Now, I consider basically all of the things you listed to be emergent phenomena as they’re composites. They’re unlikely to form any substantial “ground” for reality itself, like some final substance or the like. Faith requires something to already be present to experience faith. Energy is not a “thing” or “process” in an of itself, as in, it doesn’t exist without reference to something else in physics. I’ve thought about awareness but am not sure anymore. Samadhi is a mental state, requiring a physical body, and wisdom also requires experience, so it can’t be any ground of reality. Love comes from the body, as does compassion, rejoicing and equanimity. These are states experienced by human beings. Temporal freedom is an absence, not a presence, and hence not a ground of reality. When it comes to the elements you listed, earth, fire, air, etc. these are composites made out of atoms, which are composed of electrons, etc. The second list of elements are mental states dependent upon a body or a psyche. The third are emotional-like descriptions of acts, which require someone to enact, so its not the ground of reality.

However, I am interested in these elements of the sensual, luminous form and formless realms. It might lead somewhere. Same with with the unconditioned element, it might be what I’m looking for. Thanks for that! I am interested in an EBT answer!

As for my name, its just a reference to isekai anime (mahou = magic, in Japanese, so the name is actually just magic_magic) and magic is used quite often there and it looks cool. I don’t really study magic or practice it, though I’m interested in learning summoning magic, spirit manipulation magic (so that I can force the spirit I summon to do my bidding, because after all, if I’m powerful enough to summon it, I should be powerful enough to control it), and black magic/curse magic.

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I’ve always viewed Truth as simply meaning “that which corresponds to reality”. So it becomes tautological if we take truth as a ground to reality.

I think many Mahayana and Vajrayana texts use magic, so I don’t see why one would end up in hell.

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in MN140: The Analysis of the Elements
There are these four foundations:

  • the foundations of wisdom, truth, generosity, and peace.

The advice regarding these is (detailed in MN140):

Do not neglect wisdom; preserve truth; foster generosity; and train only for peace.

In Sn11.23 there is this story:

‘Do not, good sir, teach the Sambari sorcery to Sakka!’ .

So Vepacitti addressed Sakka in verse:

‘O Maghavā, O Sakka,
king of gods, Sujā’s husband,
a sorceror falls into the terrible hell—like Sambara,
for a hundred years.’”

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I think MN140 is talking about humanity, not of absolute reality. You can even see in that quote that its directed towards humans, so its not the ground, although they’re the most important foundations of human beings interactions as well as striving for enlightenment and ending suffering.

Well its only 100 years of hell, right? And maybe you don’t end up there at all if you do magic properly. From what I see in that quote, it seems to be more that that person would end up in hell not because of magic, but because of what they did once they acquired magical skills.