The following speaks to Western audience programming and model.

Consider the line from: Roger Rabbit, “It’s just how they paint you.” A throwaway joke in a film. However it becomes, in the Dharma lens, a diagnosis of samsara itself: beings painted by conditions, identities painted by narratives, reputations painted by perception. And in the age of social media, the paint dries faster than ever.

~

The Painted Self and the Distorting Lens of Social Media

Social media amplifies misperception because it trades in images, impressions, and instantaneous reactions — the very things the Dharma warns us are unstable, conditioned, and empty.

• Causes and conditions become flattened into simplistic stories.
• Reputations can be destroyed by a single distorted snapshot.
• Identity becomes a performance rather than a lived truth.

This is terrifying precisely because it exploits the mind’s tendency to see in pictures, to grasp at appearances (as inherently real), and to mistake the painted image for the person.

~

Two Truths in a Digital Age

• On the conventional level, social media is real enough to cause suffering.
• On the ultimate level, it is empty of inherent existence — a flicker of pixels, a projection of mind.

The challenge is that most people live entirely in the conventional without recognising its provisional nature. Without Dharma, the doorway to ultimate truth is blocked. It becomes another ‘conceptual’ wall.

~

Dharma as the Medicine for Distorted Perception

The Dharma is a science of mind, a method for correcting perception, not a belief system. It is non-dogmatic by nature, meaning in practice it involves applying awareness. For example the qualities of loving kindness, compassion and insight (wisdom) to situations as they arise. Rather than colouring perception in advance (or rigging the game).

• Emptiness of appearances helps loosen the grip of “how they paint you.”
• Moment-to-moment awareness stabilises the inner room so external noise doesn’t shake it.
• Correct relationship to phenomena means seeing images as images, thoughts as thoughts, and not confusing them with reality.

This is why Tibetan Buddha Dharma places such emphasis on the mind–body system: breath, posture, visualisation, ethics, and insight all work together to unpaint the false self. The dharma practice is proactive in developing the correct relationship to phenomena in your indoor room. This is one’s responsibility to take care of that and share in that human connection (for all sentient beings), as living awareness. In this way that they may too have favourable conditions to transform suffering by bringing everything onto the path of inner aware practice. So they too can recognise their inner wealth, recognise and use that, and have happy minds. In other words pointing to, engaging in and with the true awareness -understanding that is shared and connects us all on the inner level.

~

Western Society and the Masks of Identity

• A consumerist culture thrives on dissatisfaction.
• A commercial mindset encourages comparison, performance, and branding of the self.
• A lack of inner room leaves people vulnerable to external narratives.

Without inner stability, people cling to whatever identity is handed to them — or painted onto them. Often in unawareness as they have not learned to be aware in an inner aware way and proactively lead forth from there. Mindful of taking care of their own true treasure/ jewels, living true to the inner values, instead of operating largely subconsciously as a mere product in a commercial system model society speak.

~

The Foundational Practice: Tending the Inner Room

At the most basic level, Dharma practice is:

• Caring for the inner room
• Stabilising awareness
• Seeing clearly
• Responding with qualities rather than reactivity

When the inner room is tended, social media loses its power to distort. The paint no longer sticks.

Instead the purpose at the most foundational level is to live in accordance with the natural law of phenomena (dharma). Study awareness of reality from continue to practice and cultivate one’s inner room (exercising mental and emotional hygiene). Develop deeper true understanding and align one’s practice method. Adjusting one’s inner conduct which gives rise to a happy mind, the basis for a happy life. Share the benefits of that care, the living practice and energy with others. It is in this way evolve as humans in living awareness.

---

“Painted”— Modern Society: A Reflective Dharma Re-View

In a world made of pictures, quick‑drawn and consumed,
Where the mind takes a snapshot and calls it “assumed,”
Lived a wanderer watching about him, the stories unfold,
How the painted self hardened, how the heart became cold.

For the people wore colours not chosen but cast,
By the brushes of others, by shadows of past.
And the wanderer whispered, “No it’s just how they paint you,”
But the crowd, they never questioned if any of it was true.

On the scrolls of the sky where the bright screens would glow,
Every rumour grew wings, every spark made a show.
A distortion, a ripple, a storm from a sigh—
And a life could be shattered by one passing lie.

Yet beneath all the noise, in the stillness between,
Lay a truth rarely noticed, seldom heard, seldom seen:
That the world of appearances flickers and fades,
Like a lantern’s soft shimmer among the evening’s shades.

And emotions, the wanderer said, are like weather—
Clouds gathering, parting, shifting together.
They storm, they dissolve, they brighten the sky,
But none are the self, and none ever stay by.

So the wanderer travelled from city to hill,
For hearts to grow quiet, to soften, to still.
“Keep inner room bright,” he urged, “tend your mind—
For clarity’s garden needs care to unwind.”

“A warm inner room,” he added with grace,
“Is the broom that sweeps clean the heart’s inner space.
With mindful awareness, each moment you see
Cuts through the veil of what seems to be.”

For the veil is conceptual, woven so tight
That it masks the true nature of luminous sight.
But awareness, like sunlight, dissolves everything there,
Revealing the vastness where all fear has fled and left bare.

He spoke of two truths woven fine as a thread:
One the world of convention where stories are spread,
And the other a vastness, unbounded and clear,
Where the self is a dream and the dreamer draws near.

“Care for your inner room,” the wanderer said,
“For the mind is the canvas where illusions are bred.
If you sweep it with presence, with breath slow and deep,
Then no painted misperception can steal whilst you sleep.”

And the people leaned in, for the teaching rang true—
That awareness is medicine, ancient and new.
That the masks we inherit can fall if we see
They were never our essence, just dust on the sea.

So the wanderer smiled as the dawn touched the land,
For the crowd now saw clearly what once they’d withstand:
That the world may paint pictures, but none can define
The luminous nature of awareness of mind.
And the tale ends in silence, where wisdom begins—
Where the heart learns to loosen its sorrows and negativities/sins.
For the truth is not shouted; it’s breathed, lived, and known—
In the quiet inner room where the real no-self is not-shown.