One of the most crucial points—and at this juncture, what I consider the foremost, almost prerequisite question for anyone intending to practice—is this:

Which “world” must we truly understand to be free from suffering?

I have not taken refuge in any tradition, nor do I follow any formal religion. I also recognize that amidst entrenched interpretations repeated across generations, my personal insights hold little weight. What I say might easily be dismissed as idle chatter, redundant words, or a form of spiritual self-display.

Yet, for the sake of the truth that must be realized on the path beyond suffering, and out of simple kindness toward myself and fellow practitioners, this point must be revisited and articulated again and again, without compromise.

Fortunately, I do not have to rely solely on personal experience. Though not a Buddhist, I can turn to the early discourses to verify what has been observed. In the Early Buddhist Texts (EBTs), the Buddha addresses this issue with such directness and precision that it becomes nearly impossible to read them and continue understanding the “world” in the conventional way.

To reach friends currently on the path, I offer these words not to pile up more theories, but in the hope that somewhere across the internet, someone might pause, turn back to examine and investigate their own direct experience, and see what has been obvious all along.

Why is this question so pivotal?

Because there is a pervasive confusion between two propositions that seem identical at first glance:

• Proposition 1: Everything we know about the world must pass through our experience.
• Proposition 2: The universe is, in essence, Mind or Consciousness.

The first proposition merely describes an obvious epistemological fact: the eye sees color, the ear hears sound, the body feels touch. Thoughts, memories, concepts of self and other, past and future, and even the abstract notion of a “cosmos”—all of these are simply mental objects arising in awareness.

The second proposition makes an enormous leap. It asserts that the ultimate substance of the entire cosmos is Mind or Universal Consciousness (Citta / Vijñāna). This is no longer direct observation of immediate experience; it is an ontological, metaphysical extrapolation.

Crucially, the Buddha resolutely anchored his inquiry within the first proposition.

In the Sabba Sutta (The Discourse on the All, SN 35.23), when asked “What is the All?”, he answered unequivocally:

“The eye and forms; the ear and sounds; the nose and aromas; the tongue and flavors; the body and tactile objects; the mind and mental phenomena.”

Sabba Sutta (The Discourse on the All, SN 35.23)

These are the six sense doors (saḷāyatana) and the entire range of experience arising through them. He explicitly stated that if anyone were to reject this “All” to establish another “All,” they would never be able to demonstrate it, simply because it lies beyond the domain of verifiable human experience.

This does not deny an external physical reality. The Buddha was unconcerned with constructing speculative metaphysical doctrines. He drew a precise boundary around what human beings can directly know, observe, and thereby use to untangle themselves from suffering (dukkha).

The World as an Arising Process

The texts make this even more direct:

• In SN 35.116, the Venerable Ānanda explains that “the world in the Noble One’s discipline” (loka) is precisely that by which one perceives and conceives the world: the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. The Buddha immediately affirmed this explanation.
• This marks an essential distinction: the Buddha did not instruct people to seek an ultimate cosmic ground called Mind. He directed full attention to how a world is perceived and fabricated into lived experience.
• In the Loka Sutta (SN 12.44), although declaring he would teach the origin of the world, the Buddha offered no cosmogony. He began with the eye and forms: Eye and forms condition eye-consciousness (cakkhu-viññāṇa). The meeting of the three is contact (phassa). Contact conditions feeling (vedanā). From feeling arises craving (taṇhā), clinging (upādāna), becoming (bhava), birth (jāti), and the entire mass of sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair.

This exact sequence applies across all six senses. The Buddha explicitly called this process the “arising of the world” (lokasamudaya), and the cessation of this chain the “cessation of the world” (lokanirodha).

The world he addressed is not a physical globe that vanishes upon awakening.

Consider a practical example: Someone speaks a critical remark. Sound is heard; content is recognized. Then the mind begins projecting meaning: “They disrespect me,” “They intentionally hurt me,” “I must strike back.” From this, emotion, resistance, fear, grasping, and an entire narrative of “I” are fabricated. Psychological suffering arises entirely within this processing chain. Grasping at this process turns a raw event into a whole psychological world in which one remains trapped and tormented.

In the Rohitassa Sutta (SN 2.26), when Rohitassa asked about traveling to the end of the cosmos, the Buddha stated clearly that one cannot reach the end of the world by physical movement. Instead:

“In this very fathom-long body, endowed with perception and mind, I declare the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.”

Rohitassa Sutta (SN 2.26)

This approach remains entirely consistent: rather than gazing outward toward the cosmic horizon, he anchored truth in the immediate mechanisms of the present moment.

This clarity peaks in the Cūḷamāluṅkya Sutta (MN 63). When a monk demanded metaphysical answers—whether the universe is eternal or non-eternal, finite or infinite, whether the soul is identical to or distinct from the body—the Buddha set them aside. His reasoning was pragmatic: whether one holds the universe to be eternal or finite, aging, death, grief, and suffering remain fully present. He declared that he taught only suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path to its cessation—the only matters directly relevant to mental liberation.

The Slippery Slope into Ontological Speculation

Here lies the clean boundary:

• “Everything we know about the world appears through experience” is an immediately verifiable fact.
• “The universe is Mind,”“Awareness is the absolute ground of all phenomena,” or “There is a Cosmic Mind embracing reality” are conceptual models constructed to explain what lies beyond direct perception.

Seeing that all experience is known through the mind is one thing; concluding that “the universe is inherently Mind” is pure inference.

This inference diverts the practitioner’s gaze. What is most worthy of observation is the real-time formation of experience: senses meeting objects, sensations arising, the mind labeling and attributing meaning, giving rise to attachment, aversion, and suffering. When ensnared in doctrines of a “Cosmic Mind,” people overlook this dynamic process. Instead, they seek an immutable substrate behind all phenomena and conveniently appropriate that substrate as their “True Self.”

To be clear: those who use terms like Mind, Pure Awareness, or Unconditioned Knowing do not necessarily reify them into an absolute Self. Those with direct insight may use such terms as provisional pointers, experiencing no entity or “I” called Awareness.

However, for those without direct realization, dropping attachment to body and emotions often leads straight into a more subtle identity: “I am Pure Awareness,” “I am the witness behind all phenomena,” “There is an eternal knowing outside this physical body.”

Thus, practical observation of suffering is reduced to a belief system about cosmic architecture. A genuine insight into how we experience the world is swapped for a metaphysical assertion about what the universe is made of.

Cosmology, Pure Lands, and the Present Experience

Once that theoretical leap is taken, practice easily morphs into an obsession with other realms: a realm to be reborn into, a celestial plane to attain, or a post-mortem state that determines liberation.

Language concerning Pure Lands (Sukhāvatī), the Dharma Realm (Dharmadhātu), the Lotus Treasury World, and the ten directions then risks being treated like physical travel itineraries: an “over here” versus an “over there,” where the present is merely temporary and true liberation lies elsewhere. Practice subtly becomes an accumulation of merit to secure a better realm later, projecting hope into an unseen future while greed, hatred, and self-clinging remain active here and now.

The issue is not that Mahāyāna texts use cosmological imagery—they do so abundantly. The issue is treating these descriptions as literal geographical maps of liberation while ignoring the direct experiential investigation the teachings demand.

• In traditions like the Pure Land, historical cosmology frames the realm as an external reality. Without needing to dismiss that tradition, if one assumes freedom from suffering occurs strictly by moving to another realm, hope shifts entirely into the future while the daily architecture of the ego remains uninspected.
• In the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, majestic visions of interpenetrating worlds and boundless realms (dharmadhātu) serve to dissolve rigid mental boundaries—the illusion of isolated things, independent subjects, and separate objects. Principles such as “the unimpeded interpenetration of phenomena” (shishi wu’ai) invite us to reconsider how reality is constructed in awareness. Reading them purely as external astrophysics misses their transformative, contemplative power.

The early teachings take the reverse approach: examining how the eye sees, how the ear hears, where feeling arises, how the mind attaches labels, where craving takes root, and at which precise link the illusion of “self” solidifies into suffering.

If the goal is the cessation of suffering, the only world that must be thoroughly comprehended is the world of immediate, lived experience.

A Consistent Framework Across the Early Discourses

Early texts do reference devas, hells, and various planes of existence. Acknowledging these cosmic descriptions is entirely distinct from the central question: What did the Buddha instruct practitioners to observe to end suffering?

The textual consistency across the Nikāyas is striking:

• SN 35.23 (Sabba Sutta): The “All” is defined strictly as the six internal and six external sense bases (āyatana). Speculations beyond this exceed the domain of experiential verification.
• SN 35.82 (Loka Sutta): When asked why it is called “the world,” the Buddha defines it through sense bases, consciousness, contact, and feeling—the entire process that is disintegrating (lujjanti).
• SN 35.116: The world in the Noble Discipline is defined as the very faculties by which the world is conceived and perceived.
• SN 12.44: The arising and cessation of the world are explained not via cosmic origins, but via the dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda) of sense contact, feeling, craving, and clinging.
• SN 2.26 (Rohitassa Sutta): The world, its arising, its cessation, and the path to its cessation are located within this very fathom-long body.
• MN 148 (Chachakka Sutta): Liberation requires seeing through the six sets of six (organs, objects, consciousness, contact, feeling, craving) without misapprehending them as “mine,” “I,” or “my self.”
• MN 63 (Cūḷamāluṅkya Sutta): Metaphysical debates on whether the universe is finite, infinite, eternal, or temporal are set aside because they do not resolve birth, aging, death, and immediate sorrow.

Whether there is one realm or a thousand realms, and whether the cosmos is physical, mental, or otherwise, freedom from suffering arises solely when the machinery of suffering is penetrated directly in present awareness.

August 28, 2026

Phan Ý Ly