The Matrix: You might just be a "program" in a computer.

The Matrix: You might just be a "program" in a computer. Imagine the familiar sounds, the clicking of keyboards in the darkness, the sound of digital raindrops falling as green coded lines on a pitch-black screen. Have you ever dreamt, Neo, a dream so real that you can't tell the difference between being awake and asleep? What if you couldn't wake from that dream? How would you distinguish between the dream world and reality? This question didn't come from me; it's a sentence Morpheus asks Neo during the moment he's about to reveal the most terrifying truth. To be honest, the first time I heard this sentence in a movie theater many decades ago, it gave me goosebumps. Not because of the excitement of the sci-fi action movie, but because of a deep feeling in my heart that screamed back that we might actually be asleep. Look around you now. The desk you're sitting at, the chair you're using, the phone screen you're touching, the headphones you're wearing—how can you be sure these things are real? How can you be sure that your senses—your eyes seeing, your ears hearing, your nose smelling, your tongue tasting, and your body touching—are not just electrical signals being fed into your brain like... Computers input data into your hard drive. What if I told you that what you call daily life—waking up, working, eating, loving, or even the suffering you're currently carrying—might just be a complex simulation, a set of code running on the vast server of the universe? Would you believe me? Or, to put it even more challengingly, I'm quite certain that most of us listening are no different from Neo at the beginning of the story. We are Mr. Salaryman, living our lives according to the rules dictated by society. We wake up, rush to work, and in the evening, we come back to sleep, repeating this cycle over and over like hamsters on a wheel. We follow a program that's been written for us, never realizing that the real cage isn't bars, but our own thoughts and beliefs. Today, we won't travel far; we will journey inward, to decode what's called The Matrix from a perspective you may never have heard before. We won't just talk about the movie; we'll talk about the reality of the cosmic mind system. In the present era, the toxic concept of the Simulation Hypothesis is being widely discussed in scientific and technological circles, by world-class individuals. As Eon Ma once said in an interview, there's only a one in a million chance that the reality we live in is fundamentally true. In other words, he's almost 100% certain we're in a simulated world created by a highly intelligent civilization or some kind of supercomputer. A philosopher from Oxford University proposed an interesting theory: if human civilization could develop to the point of creating computers with immense processing power, we could create ancestral simulations so realistic that the inhabitants would have feelings, thoughts, consciousness, and wouldn't even realize they were just data within the system. Speaking of this, I can't help but wonder: if we were truly in a simulated world and we were just AI or an avatar in a game, who would be holding the controller? Who would control our destiny? Or is the algorithm simply written to randomly determine our fate, sometimes good, sometimes bad, without reason? There are many perspectives on this, but I haven't found a clear scientific answer for myself yet: is it predetermined reality or do we have the freedom to choose? What's fascinating, however, is that this concept of a virtual world isn't new. It's not something that was just invented in the Silicon Valley era. It's a truth discovered over 2,600 years ago by a great man we know as the Buddha. In Buddhism, we have the terms "maya" (illusion) and "samsara" (cycle of rebirth). Samsara isn't just the cycle of birth and death in a mythical sense; if we look at it through the lens of The Matrix, samsara is a colossal server that traps the souls of sentient beings. This system has iron rules and mechanisms more complex and rigorous than any computer program in the world. It's driven by an operating system called karma, with millions of variables affecting our lives. Importantly, it has vulnerabilities waiting to be discovered and hacked. We often hear the word "Buddho" when we chant or meditate. Many may understand it as just a mantra, a sacred word to calm the mind. But if we decode "Buddho" down to its root, to its true nature, "Buddho" isn't a person's name, nor is it a statue. "Buddho" is a codename for a state of mind that has escaped the system. "Buddho" means the enlightened one, the awakened one, the blissful one. "Knowing" means knowing the truth of the system, knowing that this world is an illusion, knowing that what the eyes see and the ears hear are merely mental constructs, not absolute reality. It's like Neo beginning to see numbers and green codes flowing down instead of images of a wall or his enemy. "Awakening" means awakening from slumber, from the long dream of samsara, awakening from ignorance that has blinded our minds for countless lifetimes, like when Neo woke up in the capsule and discovered he was just a battery having his energy drained. "Blissful" means freedom; once one knows and awakens, the mind is free from bondage, no longer controlled by the programs of defilements. It's a state beyond the system, completely transcending the Matrix—this is the goal of this journey. We're not just here for entertainment; we're exploring the possibilities of whether we all have the potential to be Neo. Do we all have the right to awaken from this capsule of delusion, or will we choose to take the blue pill and remain asleep in our sweet dreams? I have personal experience from when I first seriously started studying this. I walked to work, looked at the tall buildings, the bustling people, and suddenly, a fleeting feeling arose that everything seemed fake, like a theatrical scene, like a hologram. It was a feeling of both emptiness and excitement at the same time. I wonder if anyone else has ever experienced a similar moment, suddenly feeling alienated from the world that's spinning around them? I've designed a meticulous and step-by-step structure to help you gradually understand the mechanisms of the universe and the mind. I will use the greatest foundation for unlocking the secrets of life—the Four Noble Truths—as a roadmap to decoding The Matrix. Why the Four Noble Truths? Because this is the perfect algorithm for solving problems. In this first installment, we'll delve into suffering and its origins, but within the context of The Matrix and The Trap. We'll examine how the world's operating system is designed, why we suffer, why we age, get sick, and die, and why we don't always achieve our desires. This isn't a coincidence; it's the design of the architect or creator of the system. We'll explore the structure of the 31 realms of the universe, not just the human world, but also heaven and hell, all operating under the same server: the realm of desire, the realm of form, and the formless realm. We'll examine how the algorithm of karma works, why some are born rich and others poor. Is it randomization, or is there a fixed logic hidden within? If you were to think of one word to describe the reason you're still stuck in the same problems in life, for me, it's ignorance (avidya). It's interesting to see what word each of you thinks of. Think of that word and let's see if it aligns with the system's design. In the second installment, we'll enter the state of "Glitches in the Matrix," or ultimate truth. Here, we'll delve even deeper. Going deeper than what the naked eye can see, we'll discuss Quantum Physics, the double-sliding exponent experiment that proves the observer influences the observed, which aligns with the Abhidhamma principle of mind, that the world revolves around the mind. We'll unlock the secrets of the bald child with the bent spoon scene—why the spoon isn't real—and why our bodies, our selves, at the atomic level, at the level of form, are merely digital raindrops that arise and cease so rapidly that we can't even see them. I'm quite confident that the concept of the arising and ceasing of mind is the most important key to truly understanding The Matrix. If we don't understand that reality is a series of still images projected at high speed, we'll continue to mistakenly believe that this movie is real. But then again, that might just be my opinion, because this topic is very delicate and requires a high level of contemplation. In the third part, we'll talk about the Path, or the path of the chosen ones, which in reality, no one chooses us; we must choose ourselves. This is the process of taking the red pill. We'll discuss how to hack our own mental system, the practice of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipatthana 4), observing the body, feelings, mind, and phenomena... It's like practicing Kung Fu in a training program. When Neo starts to see Gen's movements slowing down, that's the state where the mind begins to gain concentration and mindfulness, seeing form and name separate, seeing impermanence, seeing non-self. Honestly, I've never understood why people like to think that spiritual practice is for old people or boring, when spiritual practice is the coolest and most exciting way to hack the reality system that humans can do. And finally, in the fourth stage, we will reach Nirodha, or the exit, the true way out. The final scene where Neo explodes with a light, or the state where the mind is completely freed from desire and attachment, a state called Nirvana. Nirvana is not a place, not the city of Zion, but a state where the system can no longer control us. We will conclude that we are all Neo, waiting for the day of awakening, or we will allow ourselves to be batteries for the system to drain our energy until the day we die. This is our journey map today. All this information is not my own speculation, but I have compiled it from evidence in the Buddhist scriptures, the Visuddha Pitaka, the Abhidhamma Pitaka, and compared it with scientific and philosophical theories, and film to give you the clearest picture possible. Today, I have prepared... The information is very extensive, but I believe many of you here likely have experiences, insights, or interpretations of The Matrix from a Buddhist perspective that I myself may not know or have overlooked. If you have an interesting perspective, keep it in mind or write it down, because the story will become increasingly intense. Whispers from the universe are calling you, just as Trinil whispered in Neo's ear that the answer is out there, Neo, and it is searching for you. Are you ready to take the red pill and awaken from this illusory world? If you are, please put everything down, temporarily shut off your awareness of the outside world, turn off all notifications and distractions, and open your heart as wide as possible, because what you are about to hear may change the way you see this world forever. Let's start with the simplest question, yet the most difficult question at this moment: Who are you? The name you use to call yourself, the profession you practice, the body sitting and listening—or perhaps, you are the knowing observer, watching these things from afar. In the movie The Matrix, there's a character named Cypher who chooses to betray his friends in exchange for returning to the Matrix to eat delicious, tender steak and forget the harsh reality. Cypher says a painful line: "Ignorance is bliss." This sentence reflects the reality of the cycle of rebirth most poignantly, because as long as we have ignorance, we will continue to indulge in false pleasures, enjoying the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that the system feeds us. We choose to be an element of pleasure rather than a being who must face reality. But the question is, how real is that pleasure? If that steak is just a code sending electrical signals to the brain that it's delicious, does that deliciousness actually exist? This is the most terrifying trap in the real-life version of The Matrix. We are not imprisoned by an iron cage, but we are imprisoned by our satisfaction, by our desires, by our cravings that bind us to the system. Imagine your mind as pure and powerful software. It's immense, but the moment this software starts working, it gets infected with a virus called ignorance (avidya). This virus has only one function: to distort processing. It makes us see impermanent things as permanent, suffering as happiness, and the nonexistent as our self. This is the beginning of disaster. All of this is the beginning of the birth of Mr. [the ego] within each of us. I want you to examine yourself: how many times in your life have you made decisions based on greed, desire, or anger, hatred, or fear? And did the results truly bring you happiness, or did they lead to a new, even greater wave of suffering? I believe that if we are honest with ourselves enough, we will find a shocking answer: we hardly control our own lives at all. It is this virus of ignorance and desire that controls us like puppets. And the saddest thing is that we are infatuated with our puppet masters. We protect them, we cherish them. No one can touch our ego; we are ready to fight to the death for it, even though this very ego is the program that creates the most suffering for us. In the Abhidhamma, the mind is explained in such detail and depth that... Western psychology lags far behind. The Buddha classified the mind into moments, saying that thoughts arise and cease much faster than a blink of an eye or a flash of lightning. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of thousands of thoughts arise and cease. Imagine anger; if the Matrix were a computer screen, the smoothly moving images you see are actually created by firing pixels one by one at such high speed that your eye can't keep up. Our minds work similarly; they receive information through the eyes, then it disappears, then they receive information through the ears, and so on, at the speed of light, leading us to mistakenly believe we see and hear simultaneously. This is the secret of magic. If Neo can stop a bullet, it's because he sees the gaps between those digital pixels. If a spiritual practitioner can relinquish defilements, it's because they see the gaps between the arising and ceasing of thoughts. They see that anger isn't theirs, but merely a cluster of energy or code sent for processing and then disappearing. They see that love and infatuation are just sets of data passing by. When this is seen, the state of knowing awakens—a state where one doesn't get involved in the drama, doesn't play the game, but steps back to become an observer who sees the whole truth. This is the key. Today, we won't just be discussing theory, but how to truly step back and become an observer in our daily lives. I used to wonder why the Buddha attained enlightenment on a full moon night, why he sat under the Bodhi tree, what he did that night. He wasn't just praying and asking for blessings from God; he was acting as a cosmic-level hacker. He was retracing the lines of life's processes, going back countless lifetimes, until he found the root cause of the system: dependent origination. He saw the chain of causes and effects, from ignorance to mental formations to consciousness to name and form, a never-ending cycle. And the moment he destroyed this cycle was the moment the matrix crumbled for him. The world trembled, a bright light appeared. That wasn't a magic spell, but the greatest miracle of awakening. And the good news is, he didn't take the blueprint or manual for hacking this system with him. He left it for all of us in the form of the Dharma. The question is, will we pick it up and read it, or will we let it gather dust and continue playing the game of Monopoly in this illusory world? Today, I'm not... I'm not trying to persuade you to believe me. You don't need to believe me at all. The Buddha always said, "Don't believe yet," or "Come and see," but "Come and prove it for yourself." I just want to nudge you to be suspicious, like Morpheus nudged Neo. I just want to throw a stone into your still water to create ripples, so that you begin to question the reality before you. Because the moment you begin to question, the cage will start to shake, and that's a sign that you're about to wake up. We'll take a short break to catch our breath before we fully delve into the first act. In the next act, we'll get to know the architect who created the system. We'll see with our own eyes what the traps that have been set for us look like and why we've been trapped here for so long. Get ready. Turn your chair around and face me. Pay close attention to my voice because we're about to delve deep down the rabbit hole, and I guarantee you'll never see the world the same way again. Have you noticed that every morning when you wake up, the blaring alarm clock at 7:00 AM doesn't just wake your body; it's signaling a reset of your operating system, sending you back to the same old routine? You wake up, wash your face, brush your teeth, put on the same clothes, travel the same routes, squeeze in with the same people, all with the same blank expression, to sit in a cubicle at a job you may not love, waiting for quitting time to go home, watch TV, and sleep. All only to wake up and repeat the same thing tomorrow. This is the life of Thomas Anderson before he became Neo, before he could fly or stop bullets. He was you, he was me. He was an ordinary young man, a programmer at a giant software company, a good citizen who pays taxes on time and helps take out the trash. But in another world, he was a hacker trying to find the answer to what the Matrix is. But what we're about to talk about... This isn't his adventure story, but his state of being—a state called slumber. In Buddhism, we call this repetitive cycle of life samsara, or samsara-rupa. Many understand samsara to mean the cycle of birth and death across lifetimes, which is correct. But if we look deeper, down to the second, samsara is working constantly, with every breath. Imagine your life as a skipping record or a song playing on repeat. You're happy, then you fear losing it. When it's gone, you suffer. When you suffer, you struggle to find new happiness. When you get it, you get bored, and the cycle repeats. The interesting question is, why don't we break free from this cycle? Why does Thomas Anderson continue to wake up and go to work every day, even though deep down he feels this world is abnormal? Why do we surrender to the system, becoming batteries for society, draining our life energy until we die quietly? The answer is hidden in one word, a word that's like the source code, the very first line of the samsara program: ignorance (avijjā). Avijjā doesn't mean stupidity or lack of knowledge. Yes, we may have PhDs, we may be world-class CEOs, we may be brilliant scientists, but we can still be filled with ignorance. Because in the Dharma, ignorance is the lack of understanding of the truth; it's the most powerful barrier. It works like VR glasses, tightly covering our minds without us even realizing we're wearing them. Ignorance makes us see impermanent things as permanent, it deceives us into believing suffering is happiness, and worst of all, it tricks us into seeing the intangible as "me" and "mine." This is from my own direct experience. When I lived life to the fullest, I thought owning luxury items and receiving acceptance from others was the ultimate happiness. I chased after them like a hamster on a wheel, exhausted to obtain them. But once I had them, that happiness lasted only a fleeting moment before fading away, leaving only emptiness and ever-increasing desire. I don't know if anyone else has experienced a similar moment, where the more you try to fill it, the more it feels incomplete, like an invisible leak in your heart. That leak is the work of ignorance. Buddhist scriptures have a theory that explains the mechanism of ignorance in detail... It's amazing, like laying out an electrical circuit diagram or a computer flowchart. The theory is called Dependent Origination (Pratītyasamutpāda). The name might sound difficult and ancient, but its meaning is very modern. It translates to "principles that arise in dependence on others," or in computer terms, if there's input A, process B occurs. This is because the Buddha discovered that ignorance (Avidya) is the cause, therefore mental formations (Saṅkhāra) arise. This is very important; I want you to listen carefully. Ignorance (Avidya) is like the first line of code that errors. When the first line of code is wrong, the next line, called Sankhara, will also malfunction. Sankhara here doesn't mean body or coffin, but rather "fabrication" or "conditioning." It's the process by which our mind creates a illusory world. Ignorance instructs the mind to fabricate the information it receives. The eyes see forms, ignorance instructs the mind to fabricate them as beautiful or ugly. The ears hear sounds, ignorance instructs the mind to fabricate them as pleasant or unpleasant. And this fabrication system, or Sankhara, is the true creator of the Matrix. The world we see now isn't the world as it is; it's a world rendered through the fabrications in our own minds. It's like Thomas seeing a computer screen as text, but Neo sees something else entirely. It's a green code; we're all Thomas Daerson, blinded by ignorance. We see the world as ours, the problems as ours, the suffering as ours. We mistakenly think we are players controlling the game of life. But the painful truth is, we are merely characters written by ignorance and mental constructs. If I had to make a prediction, I'd say most of us aren't living in reality. We live on beliefs and memories fed to us since childhood. We're programmed to believe that success is money, love is possession, and security is the only real thing.