I screamed when I saw the huge bug dangling off the edge of the towel I. I flung it to the far corner of the room and shivered as I carefully watched for movement. I called my son for help and we slowly approached the towel. The large black bug seemed flat and lifeless, as if it had been dead for a while. As we got closer, our fears turned to laughter as we saw that not only was the beetle dead, it had never been alive in the first place. It was a plastic beetle.
Reality that wasn’t even real. My fears were based on an illusion – I thought the bug was alive and ready to jump on me. Reality and illusion – tricks of the mind, the eyes, the light. Our perception of life is affected by so many things and we make mistakes all the time. Today was just an obvious one!
My beetle “friend” (now that he is just plastic :) led me to think about one of the first philosophical statements in the Srimad-Bhagavatam: The highest truth is reality distinguished from illusion for the welfare of all. Such truths uproot the threefold miseries [of life].# SB 1.1.2
In the case of the beetle – once I distinguished the reality (he’s plastic) from the illusion (he’s alive) my miseries were gone.
Similarly, if we can regularly distinguish the essential reality (I am not this body) from the essential illusion (I’m this body) then the miseries connected to this body will be gone!
Thank you Mr. Beetle. You jolted me back to the reality of the illusory nature of this temporary world, where birth after birth we happily (or unhappily) think “I am this body” and that that’s the basis of our “reality”. We remain unconscious, half-living lives, and dying before we know anything better.
Work to come to the other side of the illusion, and live life from there. It’s a much better place to be.
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