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The Aha! Moment
Okay, so as I was talking to TheJourney a day or two ago, he told me a few of his beliefs. At the time, I didn't think too much of it. I thought they were quite eccentric, but in a good way, though they didn't quite make a ton of sense to me. However, as I was walking home today from school and ranting to my girlfriend about dependent-origin, it came to me. Reality is only perception. I find this to be true. An anti-materialistic view. Its hard to write my thoughts down exactly on this, but I'm formulating my thoughts and ideas as you read this.
Though, I'm wondering, if this is true (and I know some people on NewBuddhist who believe this), then why can we not alter our reality? Why can we not alter what we see? If we try hard enough, why can't we see pink elephants appearing before our very eyes? Why do we perceive reality this way and not some other way? Why is life not like a dream, where we can change it at any moment? Or is it a dream and we just don't know it yet?
Just a little AHA! moment I suppose.
Though, I'm wondering, if this is true (and I know some people on NewBuddhist who believe this), then why can we not alter our reality? Why can we not alter what we see? If we try hard enough, why can't we see pink elephants appearing before our very eyes? Why do we perceive reality this way and not some other way? Why is life not like a dream, where we can change it at any moment? Or is it a dream and we just don't know it yet?
Just a little AHA! moment I suppose.
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Personally, about 30 minutes ago while I was watching TV I semi-hallucinated, a common thing for me, that the soda can in front of me moved. As usual I thought about it for a second and told myself, "it did move". :wow:
:P Just writing my thoughts down on paper. Well... on, um, pixels.
So basically I would definitely agree, that there is thus no inherent reality and this is simply because reality as we see it is merely a permutation of our own thoughts as a self entity and thus a spawn off of the 5 aggregates or skandhas that make up this self. Going off of this we create our own duality with our reality as we SEE it and reality as it IS. These two however overlap for us as we perceive it and this is why reality, and truth as a whole, is imperceivable to us... or simply put above us. Because if everything we think and do is building blocks that are layered upon our own sense of reality, it is then that we create duality with truth. Perception. Self.
ANYWAY... I think of reality as we perceive it like a TV channel. Some thing that the sky is green. This is there reality. The sky is green. And this perception is cast into the brain, in our MINDS (result of the 5 skandhas) and we project that truth into the world. Our own private TV channel
As far as changing reality goes, you perceive that there is no pink elephant in front of you. You're reality. If there were, then your reality changes, there is.
Namaste
Yes, there's an element of reality that is perception. However, there are elements of reality which are independent of our perception of them.
The Earth wasn't magically flat when people thought it was flat.
There are several ways you can detach your perception from reality.
1) You don't understand the basic nature of reality. For example, the Earth is flat, it is the centre of the universe and the sound revolves around it. It's a simple mistake, but it altered people's perception of how things actually were. Much, if not most, of what we currently believe falls into this category.
2) Mental disability. Schizophrenia and psychosis are example of disabilities which disconnect you from reality.
3) Drugs. Take some LSD and you'll see all the pink elephants you want. Then they might try to kill...
I am sure there are others, but those are the main ones I see everywhere.
It just goes to show you, that "reality is only perception" as some sort of Ultimate Truth™ is a useless notion with no real world applications. I am not trying to be rude to TheJourney, I hope he doesn't take it that way. I am just saying that idea is one of the worst to cling to.
If you feel that someone is causing you to suffer, chances are it's your fault, not theirs. In that case, you need to change your perception and in turn alter your subjective reality. So sure, there are some uses if you take a middle way approach to it and say that some things are subjective, some are objective, some are intersubjective and some are none of the above.
There is a "real world" so to speak, but it can be perceived in many different ways, and in this way your mind creates your reality through perception. You can't start seeing pink elephants as you say, but you can start seeing reality in a different way; more clearly, aligned with what the mind comes to know as its true nature. Instead of seeing people and things, you may come to see processes.
Namaste
The universe itself is concrete (though, of course, constantly changing)?
'course we don't know what it looks like. We don't know what "green" looks like either. They are just waves of different frequency. What we are seeing is the interaction of electromagnetic waves with electrons and we perceive it as 'green'. That interaction is real, but how we perceive it is subjective. We know some people perceive colours differently, while some people can even taste colours, for example.
Simply put, we interpret reality rather than create it. I think that's pretty much what Cloud was saying anyway.
@ShiftPlusOne, Yeah, "interpret" might be an easier way to put it. We're interpreting reality; our interpretation at any given time is our "perception".
Reality is what we perceive, is how I see it. What we can see, feel, hear, taste, and touch.
I figured that out days ago.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/
Anyway, I think I am only looking at one facet of it, so I'll shut up for now and just read the rest of the thread.
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Sound definition. Ears are needed for their to be "sound."
To make it about whether they are heard or not is just placing some kind of importance on a person or animal, as if without them there's nothing happening. There's something happening; that's the bottom line. It just can't be defined other than "vibrations" or undefinable (tathata). Tathata's not a definition, just pointing to the reality beyond words.
To be technically accurate, there's no "sound" because it isn't heard, but that's only being half-accurate. The question itself is misleading, in fact a koan in its own right!
this is just an hypothesis but:
basically, what scientists call "the universe" is the consensus of various minds through time; but most are just born into that consensus.