The World Is Not Degenerating — We Are Not Seeing Clearly

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Rohitassa Sutta, Dzogchen, and Pure Land Echoes

In the Rohitassa Sutta (Saṁyutta Nikāya 2.26), the Buddha makes a revolutionary statement that challenges our assumptions about the world, suffering, and liberation:

"In this very fathom-long body, with its perception and mind,
I declare is the world, the origin of the world,
the cessation of the world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world."

This “fathom-long body” — roughly the height of a person, from fingertip to fingertip — is not just the locus of personal identity. It is, in the Buddha’s words, the world itself. This is not a metaphor. It is a radical pointing out that the entirety of our suffering and the path to its end is found within our own mind-body system — perception, feeling, intention, consciousness.

So, when people say we are in the Dharma Ending Age, that the world is falling apart, we may ask: What exactly is ending? Is the Dharma itself fading? Or is it our ability to see the Dharma that is fading?

In truth, it is not the world system that is degenerate — it is we who are not seeing clearly. The degeneration is in our vision, not in the nature of reality.

The Blindness Called Ignorance

The word avidyā (Pāli: avijjā) — usually translated as “ignorance” — is better understood as not-seeing, or blindness. The Buddha did not say we are stupid. He said we are sightless. And because we do not see clearly, we misperceive. That misperception is called “delusion”.

Because we see through the lens of craving, fear, anger, and pride — the five hindrances and countless karmic filters — we misread the world. We take projections as facts. We call illusion “reality” and mistake reality for myth. And then we try to fix what we misperceive by creating better illusions.

Even a beautiful delusion is still a delusion.

A Dzogchen Echo: Illusion as Ornament

From the perspective of Dzogchen, this distortion is called marigpa, or non-recognition of the nature of mind. As Longchen Rabjam writes in The Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena:

"In the pure space of awareness, delusion never truly existed.
What seems to be confusion is merely the display of awareness itself."

The problem is not appearances — it is grasping at appearances as real. The entire samsāric world arises as a luminous play of the mind. It’s not the movie that hurts us but forgetting we’re in a theater. The Dharma Ending Age is a mass amnesia, where beings forget that they are Buddhas dreaming samsāra.

"Don’t correct the delusion; recognize it." — Garab Dorje's Three Words That Strike the Vital Point

A Pure Land Resonance: Blind Faith and Clear Light

Even in Pure Land Buddhism, which some view as devotional or other-worldly, this principle holds true. The Pure Land is not a distant heaven — it is the clear seeing of the mind purified of grasping. In The Contemplation Sutra, it is said:

"The Pure Land does not arise from the outside.
It arises from the mind that trusts and sees with clarity."

Shinran Shōnin, founder of Jōdo Shinshū, spoke to this same paradox when he said:

"Blind passions are the very workings of Buddha-nature."

In other words, we are not saved by escaping our delusions — we are saved by seeing through them and entrusting ourselves to the light of Amida Buddha, which is none other than the boundless awareness that embraces all without judgment.

For one who sees with the Dharma eye, the Pure Land is here and now, because what obscures it is not distance but delusion.

Stop Fixing the Mirage

In this Dharma Ending Age, we are not being called to panic — we are being called to wake up. Not to fix the world, but to see through the veil. Not to improve samsāra, but to realize it as dream-like display. Not to despair at degeneration, but to recognize that the world arises and ceases in our own perception.

"The origin of the world, its cessation, and the path —
all are found in this very body and mind." — Rohitassa Sutta

So long as we seek salvation outside of our own mind, we remain bound by projections. But when we turn the light inward — whether through insight, through faith, or through effortless awareness — the Dharma is not ending at all. It is beginning again, right here.

Practice Invitations:

Dzogchen Lens: Rest in open awareness and ask, “Who is seeing the degeneration?”

Pure Land Lens: Recite the nembutsu or visualize Amitābha with the recognition, “This suffering world and the Pure Land are not two.”

Early Buddhist Lens: Meditate on the six sense bases and observe the arising of "the world" in each moment of contact.

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