What This Concept Is Saying
At first glance, 幻化 looks like just another Buddhist metaphor — "everything is like an illusion, none of it is real." We've heard this. We nod. We move on. But the classical sources treat it as something far more careful and far more demanding than that dismissive reading suggests.
The word 幻 (māyā in Sanskrit) originally refers to the conjurer's art: the magician who makes a horse out of straw, an elephant out of cloth, a city out of thin air. People see, believe, react. The image carries two ideas inside it from the start: something appears vivid enough to fool the senses, yet has no self-standing substance behind it.
Buddhist thought lifts that image into a precise metaphysical and contemplative tool. Across the canonical texts in our collection, 幻化 does at least nine distinct things — and a popular reading flattens them all into one. Let me walk through what the sources actually say.
1. Knowing illusion is not being illusion (知幻而自非幻)
This is the very first move in the 《中阿含经》(T0026). A wanderer named 波罗牢伽弥尼 (Pāṭikaputta) hears that "the ascetic Gotama knows illusion is illusion." He worries: is that even a real statement? Worse — doesn't it mean that Gotama *is* illusion, since he knows it?
The Buddha's response is sharp: knowing X is not the same as being X. He uses the parallel of the 拘丽瘦 soldiers (soldiers of Koḷivāra, known for breaking precepts) — knowing that a person is murderous does not make you murderous. 波罗牢 knows his soldiers are violent; 波罗牢 himself is not violent. In the same way, the Tathāgata knows illusion; the Tathāgata is not illusion. The Buddha even warns that if someone insists "the knower of illusion *is* illusion," they are slandering the Tathāgata and will fall into hell for it.
This matters because the popular misreading runs: "If all is illusion, the Buddha must be illusion too." The canonical move rejects this — and it does so not by exempting the Buddha from the analysis, but by clarifying what "knowing" means. Knowing is a different order of event from being. We will see why this matters for daily life shortly.
The Buddha's formulation is so precise that it gives a fourfold knowledge: I know illusion, I know the illusion-maker, I know the fruit of illusion, I know the cutting-off of illusion (我知幻，知幻人，知幻報，知斷幻). Fourfold — the same pattern as for killing, stealing, false speech — because illusion is treated not as a philosophical curiosity but as a real, karmically consequential way of being that can be known in full and fully ended.
2. All dharmas, including the supramundane, are like illusion (万法皆同幻化)
Here is where the metaphor's reach gets uncomfortable. 《大宝积经》(T0310) does not stop at "the world is illusory." It extends 幻化 to:
- Worldly dharmas: food (饮食), the receiver (受者), seats (座椅), attendants (给侍人) — all 幻化. - People made of elements: a "woman" being only the four great elements — and knowing her as such yields the samādhi called 女三昧 (the "female samādhi"), a state of non-attachment to apparent form. - Heavenly beings: 化天女 (apparitional celestial maidens), 帝释天 (Indra). - The supramundane itself: the Tathāgata, the śrāvakas (声闻), the bodhisattvas. - The Dharma and nirvana themselves: the Buddha's teaching, the dharma of nirvana, and nirvana itself — all "have the nature of illusion."
The 《大宝积经》 then says: because the gods know all dharmas as like illusion, and know themselves as like illusion, they can practice bodhi without obstruction.
This is the radical layer. If even nirvana is "like illusion," the spiritual path's goal is not a permanent solid thing to grab. The whole topography of practice — and the destination — shares the same empty-show nature as everything else. The cure is woven out of the same fabric as the disease.
3. "True magical transformation" vs. ordinary conjuring (真幻化 vs 凡夫幻术)
Another crucial distinction in 《大宝积经》. The Buddha converses with a magician (幻师, called 跋陀罗). The magician's conjuring is not "true magical transformation" — it relies on technique and tricks. The Buddha's so-called "miracles" are 真幻化 because they arise from the realization that all dharmas are unborn and like illusion. The Tathāgata can do what looks like a miracle precisely because he sees through the very fabric of miracle and matter.
This is a very different claim than "the Buddha does magic tricks." The classical text is saying: the Buddha's displays *reveal* the illusory nature of appearances; an ordinary conjurer's displays *conceal* it by pretending to produce real entities.
4. The samādhi of like-illusion (如幻三昧)
文殊师利 (Mañjuśrī) demonstrates this in 《大宝积经》: a meditative state in which all the buddha-lands of the ten directions and all the deeds of the buddhas appear naturally before the meditator. They arise. They function. Yet their essence is empty, unborn, uncreated, neither arising nor ceasing — pure 幻化 display. This is not theater. According to this text, this is what the bodhisattva's meditative ground actually feels like from the inside.
5. "No transition between the grounds" (诸地无转入)
If all dharmas are like illusion, then the bodhisattva's progress through the ten grounds (十地) is itself illusory. 文殊师利 argues: because form and feeling have different natures (色於受中不得轉入), because eye and ear have different natures, because each dharma has its own suchness — there is no real "moving from one ground to another" for someone who sees all dharmas as illusion. The gradations of the path are pedagogical, not ontologically real.
6. Delusion itself is like illusion (惑乱如幻)
《楞伽阿跋多罗宝经》(T0670) makes the most theoretically rigorous move. The very 惑乱 (delusion / bewilderment / confusion) that the path is supposed to eliminate is itself like illusion. Its defining feature is 无计著相 — "no mark of fixation" — meaning it doesn't have any truly graspable self-nature to begin with.
Why does this matter? If delusion had a real self-nature, then the path's work of dissolving delusion would be impossible — you can't annihilate something that truly exists. By saying delusion is *already* like illusion, the text opens up the possibility of full cessation: you don't destroy delusion as a real entity; you simply stop mistaking it for one.
The text also makes a structural claim about *where* illusion comes from. Ordinary conjuring arises 从他明处生 — from external technical conditions (mantras, powders, gestures). It does *not* arise 妄想過習氣處 — from one's own habituated delusive thinking. Therefore, illusion itself "不起過" (does not generate fault) and "無有妄想" (has no conceptual distortion in it). The fault and the distortion belong to the deluded person who clings to the illusion, not to the illusion itself. The magician is not the source of the problem; the onlooker is.
7. Dharmatā is like illusion, unreal and swift as lightning (法性如幻，不實速如電)
A verse in 《楞伽经》 makes the boldest claim: there is no better simile for the nature of dharmas than 幻 (illusion). Dharmatā (法性, the suchness of things) is like illusion — its nature is not real, and its arising and ceasing is as swift as lightning.
Why lightning? Because lightning is vivid for a moment and then it's gone, with no residue. Phenomena appear vividly, last a moment, dissolve. By the time you reach for them, they have already changed.
8. Neither different nor not-different (非異非不異)
The Laṅkāvatāra's most rigorous passage. What is the relation between the "illusion" itself and the "various forms" conjured by the illusion (the conjured horse, the conjured city)?
- If they were *different* (異), then the illusion could not be the cause of the forms. - If they were *not different* (不異), then the forms and the illusion would be totally the same — but obviously we can distinguish them. - Therefore: neither different nor not-different (非異非不異).
This is the same logic that runs through Madhyamaka and Prajñāpāramitā analysis of dependent origination (the chariot and parts, the snake and the rope). The point is to refuse both horns: don't grasp the appearance as the reality (異), and don't say they are absolutely identical (不異). Hold both/and-neither — or rather, let the fixation on either dissolve.
The text instructs the bodhisattva: regarding "如幻缘起妄想自性" (the like-illusion dependent origination and the nature of conceptual distortion), do not fixate on it as different or not-different, do not fixate on it as existing or non-existing.
9. Karma itself is like illusion (业报如幻)
文殊师利 demonstrates this most dramatically. A figure wielding a sword appears to try to harm the Buddha. But this figure is 化人 (an apparition). The apparition has no mind, no thought, no intention. When its karmic ripening manifests (the sword falls, harm appears), it is the ripening of an apparition's apparition-action — no real agent, no real deed, no real victim. So the classical text concludes: there is no real doer of karmic action, no real receiver of karmic fruit.
This is not a denial that harm happens. It is a precise analysis of where agency and selfhood sit in the unfolding of action. (See the walkthrough below.)
10. The 《圆觉经》 layer: 菩萨众生皆是幻化
The 《大方广圆觉修多罗了义经》(T0842) takes the deepest view. In the real nature of perfect enlightenment (圆觉自性), there is no distinction between bodhisattva and sentient being — both are 幻化. So when 幻化 is extinguished, there is no one who obtains realization (无取证者). This is the cleanest non-clinging possible: even the fruit of awakening is not "got" by anyone.
Why then are there stages of practice at all? Because sentient beings are confused, haven't yet "除灭一切幻化" (eliminated all illusion). The distinctions between ordinary being, bodhisattva, and Tathāgata show up *in the process* of working with illusion, in the 妄功用 (the functioning of attempting to extinguish). Once one truly enters the Tathāgata's 寂灭随顺 (accord with extinction), one finds that even "extinction" and the "one who is extinct" do not exist.
The text uses a striking image: "a person cutting off their own head — once the head is cut, there is no one to do the cutting." Each layer of obstruction cuts itself; once cut, there is no remaining cutter standing above the work. This is the radical non-self of the path itself.
It also uses the famous 标月指 (finger-pointing-at-the-moon) image: the Buddha's teaching is like a finger pointing at the moon. The finger is not the moon, but you need the finger to find the moon. Once you see the moon, the finger can be released. The teaching itself is also a 幻化 tool.
Life's Walkthrough: 幻化 in Contemporary Scenes
Let me walk the concept through ordinary modern life. I'll be careful to map the classical categories onto lived experience without forcing them — and to flag the most common mapping error at each step.
Scene 1: The morning commute and the email that ruins the day
You open your phone on the subway. An email arrives: a curt, ambiguous message from your manager. You read it. By the time you reach the office, you have constructed an entire narrative — your manager is disappointed, you're about to be fired, your project is doomed, your career is over. You arrive at work with a knot in your stomach. You mention it to a colleague. She says, "Did you reply yet?" You haven't. You reply with a carefully neutral message. Your manager writes back: "Thanks, that's exactly what I needed." Crisis over. You realize your entire two-hour narrative was conjured.
This is the structure of 幻化 as 《楞伽经》 analyzes it.
- The email's text (幻): "from external conditions" (从他明处生) — it appeared in your inbox. The text itself is not the source of your suffering. - Your storm of interpretation (妄想過習氣處): "habituated delusive thinking" — the years of being praised-or-criticized at work, the memories of past firings and near-firings, the loops of self-doubt. *This* is where the storm actually arose. - The storm appeared vivid (不實速如電): vivid for those two hours on the train, then gone in five seconds after the second email. - You were the 愚夫心识 (the deluded onlooker's mind) mistaking the conjured form for reality.
The mistake is not in receiving the email. The mistake is in *believing the conjuring*. You can recognize the conjuring and still respond skillfully — you can still ask a clarifying question, still protect your interests, still act. You don't have to be a fool who pretends the email doesn't exist (that's another kind of delusion), nor a fool who believes the email is the catastrophe the mind conjures (that's the 計著 the texts warn against).
The 《中阿含经》 move applies here too: *knowing* the conjuring of the mind is not the same as *being* the conjuring. The fact that you can step back and say "I am catastrophizing" means you are not identical with the catastrophe. That's the entire structure of 知幻而自非幻 — knowing is not being.
Where the mapping goes wrong: people map only the *email* (outer phenomenon) onto 幻化 and miss that *their reaction* (inner phenomenon) is equally conjured. Both are 幻化. The classical texts are explicit on this point.
Scene 2: The influencer, the image, and the manufactured self
You scroll a feed. A creator posts a polished life: the apartment, the partner, the morning routine, the smile. You feel — what? Envy. Or shame. Or aspiration. You follow, you curate, you watch your own life fall short.
The classical 《大宝积经》 move: the influencer's image is exactly what the text calls 化天女 (apparitional celestial maiden). The polished self is a conjured display. So is your curated response to it — your envy is a conjured *reaction to* the conjuring. Neither has self-nature. Both are vivid enough to grip your mind and shape your actions for hours.
But here is where the simple "it's all illusion" reading goes wrong. The classical text does not say "therefore ignore the image." It says recognize its conjured nature *and* recognize the same about your reaction. The 《圆觉经》 point: even the bodhisattva who wants to help such people is 幻化. Even your aspiration to be less attached is 幻化. The work is not to throw the conjuring out — the work is to stop confusing it for what it isn't.
In practical terms: you can unfollow, you can keep following mindfully, you can even use the image as a meditation on impermanence ("this too will pass, this too is conjured"). The point is not which choice you make — it's whether the choice is made from contraction or from a wider seeing.
Scene 3: Workplace conflict — when the meeting feels like an attack
A colleague makes a comment in a meeting. You read it as a personal attack. For three days, you replay the moment, write a long email you don't send, discuss it with your partner, plan how to confront them. Then you learn they were talking about a project issue and didn't even know you'd be at the meeting.
This is the structure of 业报如幻. The "attack" was conjured; the "harm" of the meeting was conjured; the three-day suffering was conjured; the imaginary confrontation was conjured. Yet there *was* real suffering. The classical point is not "the suffering wasn't real" — that's a careless reading. The point is: the doer of the karmic action (your colleague, in your narrative) was not a real agent of harm; the receiver (you, the wounded self) was not a stable, solid wound-stand. Both were dramatized positions in a drama that your mind wrote and starred in.
This is also where 《楞伽经》's "no transition between grounds" (诸地无转入) becomes practically relevant: there is no clean, real "movement" from "I was hurt" to "I am healed." The drama's plot has these phases, but the phases are themselves conjured. Real healing usually looks more like the wind shifting, the story losing its grip, the next thing arriving — not a fixed moment of resolution.
Scene 4: The relationship — when "we" feels real
You have been with someone for years. You say "we," you plan together, you share a mortgage, you know their moods. The "we" feels like the most solid thing in your life. Then something shifts — a betrayal, a drift, a slow cooling. Suddenly the "we" feels like it was never there.
The classical text would say: "we" is a *naming*, a useful conventional designation that groups a moving set of conditions under one label. The label is the conjuring; the conditions are in flux. The "we" was never a *thing*. It was a *wording* that worked while the conditions held, and stopped working when the conditions changed.
This is precisely what 《大宝积经》 does with the "woman" made of four great elements: "woman" is a label over a flux of conditions. To know her as such — not unreal, not solid, but conjured-display — is to enter 女三昧, the samādhi of non-attachment. The same structure applies to "we," to "I," to "my career," to "my country," to "my identity."
Scene 5: The death of a parent
This is the hardest scene. The texts do not pretend that loss is not loss. They offer a different frame: the parent you knew was a configuration of conditions — body, mind, memories, habits, stories, smells — held together for a while by causes. Now those causes have shifted. The configuration has dispersed. What you call "they" is no longer meeting you. But the *love*, in some sense, doesn't depend on the configuration. The love you carry is also a configuration — and the Laṅkāvatāra's 法性如幻, 不實速如電 applies here as honestly as anywhere.
This is not consolation. The texts do not say "your parent was only an illusion, so don't grieve." They say: the parent *as you took them to be* — solid, permanent, predictable, presentable, yours — was a conjured display. So was your grief for them. So was the future you imagined with them. The conjunction of conditions made the display vivid for a while. The conjunction has changed. The display has changed. This is the meaning of 不實速如電 — unreal, swift as lightning.
The 知幻而自非幻 move applies here too: knowing that the parent was a conjured display does not make *you* a conjured display. You remain — as one who knew, loved, and now knows loss. The knower is not the known.
Scene 6: The late-night scroll and the AI-shaped thought
You open a chatbot late at night and ask it to talk to you. It produces comforting, fluent sentences. You start to feel like the chatbot understands you. Later you realize: it was trained on a vast corpus; it produced a likely sequence of tokens; the "understanding" was conjured (from external conditions — 从他明处生 — the training data and architecture). Your sense of being understood was also conjured (妄想過習氣處 — your own habituated longing). Two conjurings met.
This is exactly the structure of 《大宝积经》's distinction between the magician's conjuring and the Tathāgata's true conjuring. The chatbot's output is conjuring (the technical kind, not "true magical transformation"). Your reaction to it is conjuring (the habituated kind). Knowing this does not require you to delete the chatbot. It requires that you don't mistake the fluency for soul.
The most common contemporary error: assuming the conjuring is happening "over there" (in the AI, in the influencer, in the algorithm) while the self that watches remains solid. The 《楞伽经》 point cuts this off: 惑乱 itself is 幻化. The watcher is no more solid than the conjured display. The watching is also conjured. This is what makes the teaching radical and what makes it liberating.
Scene 7: The meditation session when nothing happens
You sit for forty minutes. Thoughts come and go. You try to be present. You fail. You judge yourself for failing. You start again. The session ends. You feel, somehow, that nothing happened.
In classical terms, this is itself 如幻三昧's training ground. Everything that appeared — the breath, the thoughts, the frustration, the "nothing happened" — arose from conditions, displayed vividly, dissolved. Nothing was solid. Nothing was stuck. The "you" who failed was the same conjured display as the "you" who occasionally noticed the breath. The non-event was an event, also conjured.
The most common mapping error, in one line
The contemporary reader's most common error is to map 幻化 only onto outer phenomena (the email, the influencer's photo, the chatbot's text) and miss that inner phenomena (your reaction, your self-image, your suffering, your sense of who you are) are equally conjured. The classical texts are explicit: the magician's display is not the source of the problem; the onlooker's clinging is. So is the onlooker. So is the clinging. All 幻化. The path does not require you to defeat the conjuring — it only requires you to stop confusing it for what it isn't.
Why Contemporary People Need This
We live inside engineered displays
A great deal of contemporary experience is shaped by deliberately engineered displays. Advertising, social media, financial dashboards, dopamine-tuned feeds, AI-generated text and images — these are not "illusions" in the casual sense; they are *expertly conjured displays*, built by people whose job is to make you mistake the conjuring for reality. The classical distinction between the conjurer's trick and the onlooker's clinging has a sharp contemporary application: blaming the algorithm is missing the point. The algorithm conjures; *you* cling. Both are conjuring; both are non-self.
"Everything is an illusion" has become a slogan
Nihilism, burnout, ironic detachment, "nothing matters anyway" — these are flat readings of 幻化 that the classical texts explicitly reject. The texts say the show is vivid, the show functions, the show even has moral consequences (业报如幻). The texts do not say "therefore nothing matters." They say "therefore don't take the show to be the only layer of reality, and don't take your reactions to be the only layer of you."
For people in a culture saturated with "everything is fake," this is a deeply needed correction: the apparent is real enough to demand your care; it just isn't real enough to deserve your ultimate clinging.
We have lost the practice of non-clinging without indifference
Contemporary culture tends to oscillate between *grasp* and *numb*. Hold on tight, or check out. The classical teaching of 幻化 offers a third option: care deeply, act skillfully, *and* release the grasping. This is not cold detachment; it is the warmth that comes from not needing the things you love to be permanent in order to love them.
It cuts through the spiritual ego trap
A serious practitioner can build an identity around "I see through illusion." The 《圆觉经》 line is precise: even the bodhisattva who is dissolving illusion is 幻化. Even the spiritual seeker is 幻化. There is no final spiritual self standing above the illusion, immune to it. This is liberating because it removes the comparison game: am I more enlightened than you? In a teaching where even the bodhisattva is 幻化, that question loses its ground.
It pairs naturally with contemplative practice
幻化 is not a metaphysics to be believed; it is a *contemplation* to be inhabited. Every time you notice a thought arise and dissolve, you are directly seeing 幻化 in operation. Every time you watch an emotion flare and pass, you are watching the lightning-speed of 法性如幻. The classical texts invite you to *see through* the display, not as a philosophical exercise but as a lived recognition.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Misreading 1: "It's all illusion, so nothing matters"
This is the most common contemporary error. It treats 幻化 as a license for nihilism or detachment. The texts push back hard: even the conjured display has consequences (the magician's sword can appear to cut); even karmic fruit is real as display, though ungraspable as self-nature. The proper response is not indifference but care without clinging.
Misreading 2: "Knowing illusion makes you illusion"
This is 波罗牢伽弥尼's mistake, and the 《中阿含经》 devotes considerable force to refuting it. Knowing X is not being X. The whole structure of the path depends on this — if knowing impermanence made you impermanent, no one could ever wake up.
Misreading 3: "Therefore the Buddha is just a magician"
The 《大宝积经》 distinguishes the conjurer's 幻化 (which conceals true nature by pretending to make real things) from the Tathāgata's 真幻化 (which reveals true nature by showing the emptiness of any production). The Buddha's so-called miracles are a teaching device: they show that what looks like a miracle is also empty. Ordinary magic is entertainment; the Buddha's "magic" is disclosure.
Misreading 4: "Only worldly things are illusion"
The 《大宝积经》 makes this flat wrong. Even nirvana is 幻化 in nature. Even the Dharma taught to dispel illusion is 幻化 in nature. This is not a dismissal of the path; it is the precision of the path. The medicine is not the disease, but it is also not a separate substance — it operates on the same empty fabric as everything else.
Misreading 5: "Therefore I should drop all practice"
If all is 幻化, including the bodhisattva grounds, why practice? The texts answer: the gradations of the path are pedagogical — they are useful *as instruction* even though they are not ontologically real. They function like the 月指 (finger pointing at the moon) in the 《圆觉经》: the finger is not the moon, but you need the finger to find the moon. Once you see the moon, the finger can be released.
Misreading 6: "The illusion is in the external world; I am the stable seer"
This is the classic dualism. The 《楞伽经》 explicitly breaks it: 惑乱 itself is 幻化. The onlooker is no more solid than the conjuring. This is why the texts keep circling back to 知幻而自非幻 — knowing is different from being, *and yet* even the knower is not a fixed substance. The knower is a knowing that knows itself as not-the-known.
Misreading 7: "This is just Buddhist relativity / 'we all have our truths'"
The texts are not saying every display is equally true. They are saying no display is finally graspable as a self-existing thing. There is a vast difference between "every perspective has value" (a contemporary cultural claim) and "every dharma is empty of self-nature" (the classical metaphysical claim). The latter is a claim about the nature of *all phenomena*, not a courtesy about viewpoints.
Misreading 8: "Neuroscience proves 幻化"
Brain science shows that perception is constructed, that the sense of a stable self is a model built by the brain, that memories are reconstructed each time they are recalled. These findings are genuinely consonant with the classical teaching. But they do not *prove* 幻化, for several reasons:
- Neuroscience describes mechanisms; it does not make the metaphysical claim that phenomena lack *self-nature* (自性) in the Buddhist sense. "Constructed" is not the same as "empty of self-existence." - Neuroscience is largely silent on what a fully awake human being looks like. Buddhism has specific accounts; neuroscience has hypotheses, often contested. - The strongest canonical claim — that nirvana itself is 幻化 in nature — operates in a conceptual register that neuroscience cannot either confirm or deny.
The classical move is to use such findings as friendly correspondences, not as confirmations. The teaching does not need them to stand up. And to claim that science "proves" Buddhism is to import a kind of authority the Buddhist tradition itself never claimed; the Buddha asks you to *see*, not to believe on external testimony.
How the Classical Sources Hold Together
If you put the layers together, you get a coherent teaching architecture:
- Ontologically: all dharmas, including the supramundane, lack self-nature and appear like illusion. - Epistemologically: knowing illusion is not being illusion; the fourfold knowledge of illusion, illusion-maker, fruit, and cutting-off is possible. - Contemplatively: 如幻三昧 is a meditative ground where this seeing is operative; the path's stages are pedagogical rather than ontologically real. - Ethically: action and consequence still function (业报如幻), but the agent and the recipient are not the fixed substances they appear to be. - Liberationally: the entire path dissolves — including itself — into 幻化, with no final "obtainer" of awakening standing outside the display.
The famous closing verse of 《金刚经》 (the Diamond Sutra) — 「一切有为法，如梦幻泡影，如露亦如电，应作如是观」 ("All conditioned dharmas are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, dew, lightning — thus should they be contemplated") — lists 幻 (illusion) alongside five other similes, each capturing a different facet of the same teaching: dream (梦, the unreal yet vivid), bubble (泡, the briefly existent), shadow (影, the dependent), dew (露, the easily fallen), lightning (电, the swift). 幻化 in the canonical texts carries the specific work of the *conjured display* — vivid enough to grip the senses, empty enough to be released.
The 《心经》 (Heart Sutra) — "照见五蕴皆空" ("clearly see that the five aggregates are all empty") — is the same teaching applied to the human person specifically: the one place where the grip of 幻化 is most tenacious, because the one being conjured is most tempted to mistake themselves for the conjurer.
A Final Image
The classical image that perhaps holds the whole teaching: a conjurer performs at a festival. People gather. Some believe the horses and elephants are real — these are the deluded. Some know they are tricks — these are the wise. Some know they are tricks *and can still enjoy the festival* — these are the wise without attachment. And the Buddha, according to the texts, is the one who, having seen through every conjuring, performs "true conjuring" — displays that themselves reveal the empty nature of display.
You don't have to leave the festival. You don't have to denounce the conjurer. You only have to stop mistaking the conjured horse for a real one, while still being moved by its beauty.
That is what 知幻而自非幻 makes possible. That is what 如幻三昧 makes intimate. That is what 万法皆同幻化 makes universal. And that is the practical use of an old metaphor that the sources insist is not a metaphor at all — but the actual texture of everything that appears.