I am real.

It's one's perception of the world which is the illusion because the mind is clouded by desire, attachment, dislike and and delusion .

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What is Real?
 

jturk:
"When I have taught non-Self, fools uphold the teaching that there is no Self.
The wise know that such is conventional speech, and they are free from doubts."

"When I have taught that the tathagata-garbha is empty, fools meditatively cultivate [the notion] that it is extinction [uccheda], subject to destruction and imperfect. The wise know that it is [actually] unchanging, stable and eternal."
Siddartha Guatama

Real?
 

Regarding reality, and consciousness, Inventor and philosopher Dr. Young has something to say about it's emergence from, "Light":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR8Fk...feature=relmfu


"Cypher: You know, I know this steak doesn't exist.

I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?
[Takes a bite of steak]

Cypher: Ignorance is bliss."

'An illusion is a perceptual disturbance, while a delusion is a belief disturbance.'

What is an existence? What exists is defined as that which can be known. If it cannot be known by the mind, then it does not exist. And things can exist as in fallacy or in reality. And reality can then be sub-divided into conventional reality and ultimate reality.

In the conventional reality, dualism or multiplicity exists. There would be a subject ponders at the other side of the object or matter - phenomenon arises. And phenomenon is thing that appears to or is perceived by senses and therefore, it is empty. From direct experience, we know that humans and things cause pleasure and pain, and that they can help and harm. Therefore, phenomena certainly do exist but the question is how? They do not exist in their own quality but only have an existence dependent upon many factors, including a consciousness that conceptualises them. Thus it is not that you come to understand that the object or phenomenon does not exist but rather, you find that its inherent existence is unfounded. This is the ultimate discovery about the orientation of the nature.

But in the ultimate reality, things do not exist in the ways that concepts and language imply they do. Things would only exist as in deepest facts i.e. it is beyond mind and beyond concepts and words in the sense that it is beyond our usual ways of perceiving things. Existence in the deepest fact would mean no perception, no conception, no label, no boundary, no name, no activity, no shape, no relation, no description, no stereotyping, etc. In the end, no dualism or multiplicity would exist because there is no mind arising as a subject pondering at the other side of the object or matter. Subsequently, there is no dependent arising in the ultimate reality and nothing has ever changed - no beginning, no ending.