Firewns,
This is my understanding:
“The world does not exist”
When we dream, we take whatever we are experiencing as real as long as the dream lasts. Only on waking up do we realize it was a dream. I recall on one occasion in my teens or early 20’s the dream felt so real that on waking up it took me some seconds to make the clear distinction which of the two states was the reality.
The ground for those who hold that the world (‘reality’) does not exist is that they equate the waking state (the world, reality) with the dream state as phenomena that arise and fall, that is,that have a beginning and an end, in both states of consciousness. And , if anything, the doubt that ‘the world’ does not exist, or is unreal, occurs to us only when we are awake. Doubts about the ‘reality’ of whatever is experienced never arises FOR AS LONG AS THE DREAM LASTS. Of course we realize that it was all a dream on waking up, and that whatever was experienced there was unreal, but the dream, as an experience, the experiencing, is real enough. We may find ourselves sweating or completely taken by the experience, in a pleasant or unpleasant way, depending on the nature of the dream.
All that in turn arose from the philosophy found in the Vedas that whatever has a beginning and an end is unreal. Now a distinction must be made between what exists/does not exist and what is real/unreal. It goes something like this: a cloud seen in the sky and one seen in a dream are both unreal because in both instances the cloud has a beginning and and end, appears and disappears. Yet it existed, either as condensed water vapour in the sky or ‘formed by the mind’ internally during dream. It exists only as long as it lasts. By this criterion, therefore, existence may be real (lasting, indeed, without beginning or end in time) or unreal (having a beginning and an end),all of which renders everything in the world, indeed, the world itself’unreal’ – and this is, to my mind, what is meant by those who assert that ‘the world does not exist’, because, surely, they are experiencing the world alright (it ‘exists’) but it is held to be unreal. Now, again on this criterion, the only thing that is ‘real’ is Infinite Space: it has neither a beginning nor an end, not only in time (so it is ‘real’) but also in space, cannot come to be, cannot be destroyed, cannot be extended or diminished, does no undergo change in any way whatsoever, is inside and outside of everything, that is, it pervades and encompasses everything,and is at once the container and the contained, without a boundary (and therefore no ‘centre’ can be located anywhere),Itself infinite and containing the infinite. So all objects,all phenomena, all experiences, all that is inside oneself and all that is outside. everything whatsoever is said to ‘not exist in reality’ because all are impermanent, ephemeral; therefore ‘the world does not exist’.
As to the view that ‘there is no special person as father or mother’, I do not see why you ask the question…..yes we are greatly indebted; through them we get the opportunity of a human bhava…think of it, we can attain a deva or brahma bhava solely through our own efforts in opapatika ‘birth’ which requires no father and mother’ but for the extremely precious human bhava we require a father and a mother
y not