What, if anything, is the "real world"?
It has been pretty obvious for centuries that all we know about the world comes to us by means of our senses. Even the vast new body of knowledge about the universe that Science has provided lately comes indirectly through indirect "evidence" and human reasoning, which turn out to be the most powerful of our senses in the long run.
But if anyone suggests to me that this means that the "real world" is entirely a matter of our imagination and there is really nothing "out there", I will suggest that he (it's always a "he") take another drag of on his funny cigarette and go lie down somewhere. Let the rest of us talk seriously.
What is an endless subject of fascination is the surprising difference between what we perceive and what we can subsequently learn is "really" happening. We learn that we do, indeed, see the world through very foggy lenses and that the more we learn about the world, the more we find out how little of it is perceived or even suspected by us poor humans. The world is obviously much more than we can imagine, which is one of the many reasons why it makes no sense to think that we are somehow dreaming it up as we go along.
In fact, we are probably getting a lot more information from our "conventional" senses than we consciously realize.
In Zen, we take it for granted that the mind is "nothing more" than the sum total of sensations and thoughts it "contains" at any one moment. The "self" and the "mind" are often rather imprecisely equated in this line of thinking (I have shown that the self is more than the "mind" in another post). But if the "senses" are delivering more to the mind than we know, then perhaps the mind and, by extension, we ourselves, are more than just what happens inside our heads, plus what we perceive (or know we perceive) at the moment.
Why should this matter and what the hell am I talking about?
Lets take a simple example and confine ourselves to the old six senses. The real world around me is modelled in my brain, which, as previously described, is part of "me". But that real world is shared. It is packed full of objects whose identity, purpose and meaning is shared with people around me. This is especially true in the modern world where, as I look around me, everything in my field of view has been created by another human being. This shared reality is part of me. To put it another way, our "selves" significantly overlap.
I suspect that this "overlap" is much wider and more significant than we normally perceive it to be, like the "background" reality created in our heads that seems to be "just there".
Last night, we watched the excellent movie "Oranges and Sunshine", the true story of how, in the 20th century, the UK government abducted 130,000 children and sent them off to horrible lives (including sexual slavery) in the "colonies". The children all lost their birth parents and the parents had no idea what happened to their children. The movie is about the massive effort to reconnect parents and children, plus the importance of making this connection. Somewhere along the line it struck me how much of my own identity depends on knowing quite a bit about my parents and their parents, along with as much as I can learn about their lives. I am currently reading about Alberta in the 30's, where my father grew up. It's important because, in a sense, it happened to me.
At least for me, this shared, overlapped "selfhood" is very much like my inner view of the world itself. It's background and seems to be "out there", when it is actually created by me. It is part of me.
But if anyone suggests to me that this means that the "real world" is entirely a matter of our imagination and there is really nothing "out there", I will suggest that he (it's always a "he") take another drag of on his funny cigarette and go lie down somewhere. Let the rest of us talk seriously.
What is an endless subject of fascination is the surprising difference between what we perceive and what we can subsequently learn is "really" happening. We learn that we do, indeed, see the world through very foggy lenses and that the more we learn about the world, the more we find out how little of it is perceived or even suspected by us poor humans. The world is obviously much more than we can imagine, which is one of the many reasons why it makes no sense to think that we are somehow dreaming it up as we go along.
In fact, we are probably getting a lot more information from our "conventional" senses than we consciously realize.
In Zen, we take it for granted that the mind is "nothing more" than the sum total of sensations and thoughts it "contains" at any one moment. The "self" and the "mind" are often rather imprecisely equated in this line of thinking (I have shown that the self is more than the "mind" in another post). But if the "senses" are delivering more to the mind than we know, then perhaps the mind and, by extension, we ourselves, are more than just what happens inside our heads, plus what we perceive (or know we perceive) at the moment.
Why should this matter and what the hell am I talking about?
Lets take a simple example and confine ourselves to the old six senses. The real world around me is modelled in my brain, which, as previously described, is part of "me". But that real world is shared. It is packed full of objects whose identity, purpose and meaning is shared with people around me. This is especially true in the modern world where, as I look around me, everything in my field of view has been created by another human being. This shared reality is part of me. To put it another way, our "selves" significantly overlap.
I suspect that this "overlap" is much wider and more significant than we normally perceive it to be, like the "background" reality created in our heads that seems to be "just there".
Last night, we watched the excellent movie "Oranges and Sunshine", the true story of how, in the 20th century, the UK government abducted 130,000 children and sent them off to horrible lives (including sexual slavery) in the "colonies". The children all lost their birth parents and the parents had no idea what happened to their children. The movie is about the massive effort to reconnect parents and children, plus the importance of making this connection. Somewhere along the line it struck me how much of my own identity depends on knowing quite a bit about my parents and their parents, along with as much as I can learn about their lives. I am currently reading about Alberta in the 30's, where my father grew up. It's important because, in a sense, it happened to me.
At least for me, this shared, overlapped "selfhood" is very much like my inner view of the world itself. It's background and seems to be "out there", when it is actually created by me. It is part of me.
"We don't know what this is, but we are all in it together"
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