The Cause of Suffering: the Dream and the iPhone

Ceasing of karmas and afflictions is liberation. Karmas and afflictions arise from conceptual thoughts. These arise from elaboration (of grasping at true existence). Elaboration ceases by (or into) emptiness.

To understand this verse, one needs to understand five points:

Saṃsāra as opposed to Nirvāṇa

Contaminated Karmas

Afflictions

Inappropriate Attention (the “conceptual thought” in the verse)

Self-Grasping Ignorance (the “elaboration” in the verse — tröpa, or prapañca)

These five points were explained with the help of a dream example. Suppose you’re dreaming, and in the dream you see me with an iPhone. What is this? It is a dream iPhone — not an actual iPhone, but something appearing in a dream. Yet within the dream, you perceive it and say, “It’s an iPhone.”

Then, in the dream, you see a “Brand New iPhone 17 Pro Max.” Tenzin Sherab says, “May I exchange my mobile with your iPhone, Ven. Geshe-la?” Lhakpa-la also says the same. They start to have a fistfight and end up behind bars.

Now let us analyze why they suffered. The immediate cause is the fistfight — where did that come from? It came from attachment to the brand-new iPhone and aversion toward the other person who also wanted the same mobile. Why did that happen? Because you exaggerated the quality of a simple mobile phone as a Brand New iPhone 17 Pro Max — if you had seen it as only an iPhone 6, you would not have had this affliction. And why did that happen? Because you did not see the mobile as a dream mobile — you saw it as a real mobile. So this was the root cause: seeing the dream mobile as a real mobile.

Therefore, if you do not want to suffer, you should wake up. This is why “Buddha” means the Fully Awakened One — the one who has awakened from the sleep of ignorance.

Now, let us understand how suffering arises, or how saṃsāra comes into being, through the five points:

Saṃsāra as opposed to Nirvāṇa — Being behind bars = saṃsāra; waking up = nirvāṇa.

Contaminated Karmas — The fistfight.

Afflictions — Attachment to the phone, aversion toward the other person.

Inappropriate Attention — Exaggerating an ordinary iPhone 6 as a Brand New iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Self-Grasping Ignorance — Mistaking the dream mobile for a real mobile — the root cause of it all.

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Applying the Example to Real Life

Now, moving from the example to real life: the Buddha said that believing things to be objectively real is the self-grasping ignorance that triggers inappropriate attention, afflictions, and contaminated karma — giving rise to suffering, or saṃsāra.

Some Technical Points

Points 5 (self-grasping ignorance) and 4 (inappropriate attention) are also, technically, afflictions — but they are listed separately because they are subtler afflictions than the rest.

Here is how the mind actually works: seeing things as objectively real is the foundation. On top of this foundation, inappropriate attention is stacked — exaggerating the qualities of the object. On top of that, the (grosser) afflictions are stacked. Together, these three give rise to contaminated karma and suffering.

So if the root cause is cut, everything collapses — like an iceberg melting, where anything built upon it comes crashing down along with it.

This is how one can see one’s own Buddha nature: by waking up — that is, by seeing reality as it truly is, empty of objective existence, dreamlike in nature.