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They aren’t real, despite what you think or what I want to be true. –Xian

It’s been an interesting exercise in logic to have these conversations with you. I’m sorry that for you it’s so personal. In a way, you are right, the common use of the word “real” does not actually reflect reality as physics describes it. But more importantly you are very wrong in that reality as physics describes it is not intended to describe your experience. This is also why using Buddhism to conclude that you aren’t living in the real world is also wrong. And I know that people who claim to be Buddhist masters say that, they’re wrong too.

Buddhists figured out that our perception of the world is not quite right, and that we use that perception to create our own suffering. That’s pretty insightful for 3,000 years ago, but there are limits to how much you can do with that. Even now that we can describe how there is no inherent meaning to life, and no nirvana to get to, that we create meaning and we create heavens and hells, that still doesn’t make Buddhism “true” in the sense that it describes reality better than anything else.

If anything, you’ve discovered the flaw in Buddhism. It tells you the source of your suffering is something you create and gives you some tools to help switch that off but it doesn’t acknowledge that there’s only one switch and your source of joy is on that same circuit. I think it’s implied that you will meditate to calm yourself, but you will come back in to life and experience to find joy, and unfortunately joy sometimes leads to sorrow, so then you go meditate again.