Don't Believe the Hype

Consider this: According to theoretical physics, matter is mostly empty space that is given the appearance of from based on dimensional oscillations of tiny "strings." The movement of these strings determines which elementary particles will manifest (electron, muon, etc.) and these particles are the building blocks of atoms, cells, and all matter in our world. Once matter is "there" the human sensory system must perceive it, using sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste. But this sensory data has no meaning to the person. It's just raw data, until the mind's cognitive training tells it what to think about the sensory input.

For example, we put a lemon in our mouths and taste buds fire, sending data to the brain. If we did not have a meaning system to say "tart" it would not be "tart" to us. It would just be sensation. Further, we may like or dislike the sensation, whether we also know it as tart or not. The habitual pattern of how our minds give meaning to sensory information that is perceived by the body is called conditioning in the West or karma in the East. Lastly, there is our consciousness that is able to be aware of this process taking place, if we bother to direct our attention towards an examination of our experience of the physical world.

I want to encourage you to do such a contemplation right now. First you must accept that the extensive volume of research over a hundred years by brilliant minds the world around are not making it up when they say that matter really can't be found if you look deeply enough. Matter is not solid at all to an electron microscope. It only looks and feels solid to a human because our sensory system isn't as sharp as an electron microscope's is. So accept that things aren't what they appear to be first of all and then we can get started in a relationship to the way things actually are.

Next, having accepted that matter is not something absolute and solid, begin to ask yourself how it is it has such concrete meaning to you. If you walk into a wall, it surely is experienced as solid. Why is that? Don't take it for granted. There are particles that are a lot smaller than you popping through walls all the time.

Then begin to consider the separation between sensation and interpretation of the meaning of that sensation. Touch your hand. Now for a moment pretend that it was someone else's hand you were touching. Try to ignore feeling it from the inside (being touched) and just feel the texture of your skin. Look at the thoughts you can have about the feeling of your skin. Then think of how many times you have touched your skin without knowing it in those ways. Has your skin changed, or have you simply given it a new meaning? That additional meaning makes your skin effectively something more within your experience of it.

Usually you are on auto-pilot in giving meaning to what you encounter in life. You've been taught what you're supposed to think about everything and do so without even needing to become conscious of most decisions. Try going through the next half hour flipping each of your thoughts on its head, and considering that the opposite might be true. For example, if you look out the window and it is cloudy the thought might arise, "this is gloomy weather." That is a reasonable thing to say given our social conditioning to prefer sunny skies over cloudy skies. But what if you turned that thought into "this is a soothing and relaxing day." Try to actually experience the presence of the cloud filled sky as something soothing and relaxing. Think of the freshness of the air if its also breezy or of the softness of the light. It truly could be perceived as a very desirable type of weather, an idea not expressed by the term "gloomy."

Realize how your automatic thinking leads you to cast the same judgments again and again, locking you into a limited amount of life satisfaction, in which the future can never really be any better than the past, since, let's face it, there are sometimes going to be sunny days and sometimes cloudy days. And yet, the preferability of sunny or cloudy skies is not a solid thing, not an absolute truth. It's just a judgment you've gotten used to making. The difference between "gloomy" and "soothing" is not contained within the weather, but rather within your mind. What does it take to give you a choice about whether the weather has to determine how much you enjoy the day?

Ultimately it all comes down to this: Given that our experience of life is determined by our made up opinions about a truly insubstantial world, why not take it all a little less seriously? DON'T BELIEVE YOUR THOUGHTS! Question what you think. Don't accept your judgments about this world at face value. Look deeper, searching for alternative ways of seeing. As I've written again and again, to be a Buddha does not mean to enter some far away world called "nirvana" or "heaven" nor does it mean to be perceived by others as a Buddha. To be a Buddha means to perceive this world as "nirvana" just as it is right now, however it is right now.

For emphasis, the doorway of the path to freedom is simply that you truly accept that your thoughts are not a reliable source of information about this world. Contemplate your experience at the most subtle level until this conviction emerges. More on this later.