Reality

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

Often we hear the parents of teenage children complaining, "I can't communicate with my kids, they live in a different world."

And at the same time, their children are saying, "My parents have completely lost the plot, they cannot see beyond their own narrow lives."

According to Buddhism, both complaints are true in a sense that we have never imagined. Buddha taught that all troubles stem from our mind. He also said that all happiness comes from our mind. If we think about this, it seems that the entire world comes from our mind, and, yes, Buddha said that too.

The general assumption that there is a solid world existing out there, independent from our minds, the same for everybody, and within which we move as passive observers, is incorrect. There is no external world independent from our minds. Each one of us exists in a world that is a projection of our own mind: no two people can ever have exactly the same experience. There are enough things in common in the way we project things to enable us to talk about "our world." But "our world" is only a generalisation. If we closely examine our lives, each of us has a particular pattern of projections that creates a unique world for ourselves alone.

For example, when we are in love, flowers become incandescent temples of colour, birds sing the sweetest songs, and the world is full of promise and happiness. But when we are depressed, colour drains from the world and everything seems wrong and meaningless. When a depressed person and a person in love walk along the same street, is there an independent reality that exists apart from their two quite different worlds?

Buddha explained that the houses, trees, and gardens in the street have no self-existence. They are nameless entities with the potential to appear to mind in many different ways. According to our state of mind, we see only one of these potentials, this becomes our reality, and we name the object according to the way we perceive it. Someone who sees a different potential appearance through a different state of mind sees another reality. An illustration of this principle is the appearance of a flower. To a bee, whose eye is sensitive to different wavelengths of light than a human eye, a flower appears completely differently to the way it appears to a human. Which of us sees the real flower? There is no real flower existing in its own right independently of an observing mind. There is a base with many potentials, but it only becomes a flower-for-a-human when it is observed by a human. At other times it is a flower-for-a-bee, a flower-for-a-bird, and so on.

Furthermore, those of us with the preconception that the flower is a weed will feel displeasure and see the flower as an enemy. Non-gardeners, however, will see it as a pretty thing and will feel pleasure. The appearance of the flower as friend or enemy comes from the mind. There is no real flower that can be independently established to be friend, enemy, neither friend nor enemy, or both friend and enemy.

Scientists pride themselves in presenting an objective picture of the world, but even they have to admit that, ultimately, the very act of observation is a determining factor in establishing what is observed. There is no absolute reality; Newtonian physics must give way to relativity.

Carl Jung showed that paintings gave insight into the minds of his patients, and later psychiatrists used acting, sand play, and other methods to learn about the inner world of the mind by assessing our external expression. This is in harmony with Buddha's teaching that the entire way we live our lives, not just our artistic expression, reflects the way we see the world to exist. In our pursuit of happiness and our attempts to avoid suffering, we are constantly trying to physically transform the world. Such behaviour is extreme human folly; all we have to do to achieve peace and happiness is change our mind.

Contrary to what many think, Buddha did not say the world is an illusion. He said it is like an illusion. Apart from the normal dependence of things upon our minds, ignorance, anger, and attachment distort the entities of our world, including our own self, as inherently good, bad, or indifferent. Like an illusion, we then react to these false appearances as if they are true and have nothing to do with our minds. Enclosed within this world of deluded projections, we become more ignorant, attached, and angry until someone finally points out our mistake.

Now you can begin to communicate with your children by remembering that pop-music-for a-kid is an entirely different phenomenon to pop-music-for-a-parent. Abandon your subjective discriminations, remember your own childhood, and treasure the precious opportunity to enjoy life with your kids, before it is too late.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.