Self-Reflecting Reality

Some of the basic ideas in Buddhism have really changed my way of looking at the world and my fellow humans, and I'd like to share with you how that works.

_{source: Public Domain Pictures.net}

Buddhism still confuses me. Is it a religion, faith, or just a philosophy of life? Buddha is not a god and there is no worshiping of one of more almighty beings. Maybe it's a religion without a God, because it certainly has it's rituals, scriptures and organization, that give it some religious aspects. But whatever it is, to me it's mainly a method of traveling along a spiritual path with the goal of understanding one's self and its relation to reality.

This principle I tried to capture in the title of this post. The most important realization that changed my world-view is the simple fact that everything I see, everything I experience, is basically a reflection of my self. And at this point I'd like to throw in a word of caution before continuing, and want to emphasize that what follows is not to say that there's no objective reality. It's not meant to affirm the postmodern nihilism that says there are no universal truths, only personal truths.

But, everything I see is filtered by my self. Everything I am, everything I've learned and experienced, all that has accumulated to form the being that is me, shapes for a great part what I see. This realization came to me late in life, maybe two years ago approximately, when I heard this explained in such a clear manner that I want to repeat that explanation here, for you. I don't remember who it was, or I would have linked the video where I heard it. I don't even remember if it was Alan Watts, or maybe Alan Wallace or another Buddhist teacher or even someone different completely. Doesn't matter, as the explanation is simple enough for me to reproduce here :-)

The fact that we truly experience reality through a very specific filter of the self is illustrated best with language. When someone speaks, the vibrations that go through the air and reach your ears, are not words. They're just sounds, nothing more. Only in our brains, in our minds, in our consciousness we attach meaning to those sounds and understand them as words. This is true, because if that same person starts talking in a language you don't understand, it's all gibberish to your consciousness. And imagine a language that is so alien to you that you can't even recognize any type of rhythm, groupings of sounds that you would associate with anything like "language", and you've got the picture. Sounds reach our ears and in our minds they become words with meaning. Language is the convention of sounds and meaning.

_{The first card in the Rorschach inkblot test.
source: Wikimedia Commons}

The same goes for sight; what reaches your eyes is nothing more than shapes and colors, that's it. Only in the mind we recognize objects and beings and we can name them to :-) But we see only that which our personal filter allows us to see. This is what the Rorschach test, or ink blot test, is all about.

We can extrapolate this rule of thumb to all perceptual experiences and the emotions these experiences bring with them. This means, and this is why this simple rule is often so hard to accept, that if we see ugliness everywhere, if we have many conflicts, if we're short tempered, easily offended, the ugliness is most probably inside our-self. It's our filter that shows us an ugly world. If, for example, you're having conflicts all the time, you can do two things: hate the world, or realize that the other common factor in all the conflicts is you.

The spiritual path I mentioned in the beginning is one of self-examination essentially in which we try to eliminate as much causes for inner suffering as possible, like hate, anger, jealousy... Heck, I just realized: Yoda was a Buddhist! ;-) And on the other hand cultivate causes for inner happiness like love, understanding, patience et cetera. All this is easier said than done. But it always helps to start with small steps: that's what I'm trying to do. Just try to decide, for yourself, on one cause of inner suffering, and try to eliminate just that one. When interacting with other people and something happens, or someone says something, that makes you angry, try to recognize that before responding or reacting. And then try to see if there's something in your own mind that causes the anger, or if there's another way to react than with anger.

I'm still learning, still taking those first small steps and try to be as mindful as I can. But it's difficult and it takes time. So I hope you'll forgive me if I slip up from time to time ;-) I'm grateful that you found your way to my blog, dear reader, and thank you for reading this article. I'll be back tomorrow and hope to see you back here too! Until the, stay mindful and keep steeming!

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