Perceptions

Good Morning,

I know many of you who receive The Daily Buddha have minor degrees in philosophy, or at least a passing interest in the subject. In basic philosophy classes we come to understand subjective reality VS objective reality. By understanding these fundamental views we can take a deeper look at Buddhist logic. For example I am sitting in a chair writing this letter. From our typical perspective, this chair is solid and belongs to a certain class or category: A hand-crafted modern chair.

We believe we understand an object when we can define and classify it into a category. We take this for granted. We can also describe the chair to others. They know what to do with it - sit in it - as with all other members of this category. As the renowned philosopher Bertrand Russell explained, a category is not a member of itself, therefore I can not sit on the category chairs, an abstraction.

Buddhist logic suggests that when we classify and reason about chairs (or anything) in this way, we are perceiving our thoughts and not the real world. We think we know an object by it's category, but we do not. We only know the category. The truth is we could sit on a desk, on the floor, or on the ground. Since anything can be a chair we begin to see the limitations of our categories and the way we perceive our world.

A wonderful experience awaits us when free ourselves from the limitations of our categories and our own pre-conditioned thoughts. There is a simple quote from Buddha that makes this crystal clear:

The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear or see anything new. Buddha.

Have a great day and when we open ourselves to the world we allow the light to pour in and illuminate the shadows of our mind.
Peace and Love, Jim
jim@thedailybuddha.com
www.thedailybuddha.com