Inception - Buddhist interpretation of the film The inception of an idea: "An idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagious. And even the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you." "Now, in a dream, our mind continuously does this. We create and perceive our world simultaneously, and our mind does this so well that we don't even know it's happening. That allows us to get right in the middle of that process." “If you're going to perform inception, you need imagination. You need the simplest version of the idea - the one that will grow naturally in the subject's mind. Subtle art.” Compare the Buddha's description: "I say that even the inception of a thought (cittuppado) concerned with wholesome things is of great importance, not to speak of bodily acts and words following it. Therefore, the thought should be produced...” http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.008.nypo.html “Whatever a monk frequently thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of his mind.” http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.019.than.html Ariadne's double mirrors – showing infinite regress going in both directions (layers upon layers of consciousness and of deception, avijja): "You never really remember the beginning of a dream, do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what's going on." Remembering how one came into a dream = sati (recollection) which brings us back to reality. Projections – compare Madhupindika Sutta (categories of proliferated perception attack the person who started the process): Dependent on eye & forms, eye-consciousness arises [similarly with the rest of the six senses]. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as a requisite condition, there is feeling. Starting with feeling, the notion of an "agent" — in this case, the feeler — acting on "objects," is introduced: What one feels, one perceives (labels in the mind). What one perceives, one thinks about. What one thinks about, one "papañcizes." Through the process of papañca, the agent then becomes a victim of his/her own patterns of thinking: Based on what a person papañcizes, the perceptions & categories of papañca assail him/her with regard to past, present, & future forms cognizable via the eye [as with the remaining senses]. What are these perceptions & categories that assail the person who papañcizes? Sn 4.14 states that the root of the categories of papañca is the perception, "I am the thinker." From this self- 1