Reality bites!

For centuries humankind has pondered deeply so as to trace the so-called line of demarcation between real and unreal. And going through the advocacy of different schools of thought that have surfaced over the years, one undoubtedly gets puzzled. Real for some is unreal for others. Religion, for instance, can easily enhance our level of understanding!

But can there be a ubiquitous definition of being real? Can we call something that is perceived by the five senses as real and that our clairvoyance feels as unreal? Is it physical, biological or something that is entirely psychological? At most instances, it’s our mind and its juxta position with the ambience that defines our perception. But is this just a creation of human mind? And is there not anything, which is by itself real? Can we call the sun real or is it just our eyes that are deceiving us? Can someone justify by saying sun as moon or vice versa?

I cogitate. Why do we have so many axioms to define our perception? And from where do these axioms arise? Is it not our mind that conceives these axioms as well? Then, why cant sun be moon and moon be sun? Why cant day be night and night be day? Just because we have been taught to define them as they are we have to perpetually accept them? Why do they call following all these predefined notions as being real and something that is thought of otherwise as unreal?

"Facts are brutal beast of reality", a friend had once said. The fact that sun is hot and not cold makes it impossible for me to conclude otherwise. The heat is the fact and the sun -in turn- getting it’s meaning is the reality!

I might cling on to the belief that sun is not what it seems to be and guide my perceptions accordingly. But what I fail to acknowledge is its true self. Because of the fear that my whole interpretations over the years can go astray. On which are based are based my so many other inferences. I continue to dwell on the false world of cognizance that I’ve created around myself. I fail to accept what is in real; I fail to come in terms with reality but instead continue being happy with what is apparent. For me sun being hot is enough, even if it’s not the sun that is hot, I’d like to believe that it is. Since it is what is perceivable by my senses thinking that in fact is the reality!

The whole of the above instance stands analogous to our everyday interpretation of facts. Let me site an example; a sky may look blue to a person with a normal set of eyes but for a color blind it looks black. For the normal eyes blue is real and for the color blind black. But what if every one of us were colorblind? Then what would have been the real color of the sky? Everything that we define as real and every other thing that we brand as unreal underlies the preconceived notions rooted in our head. Moreover, at most instances we like to label things of self-gratification as real. Here, even our residing in fool’s paradise seems logical to us. Since we want to be happy with what we see without having the sufficient courage to face what is the reality.

Even though I’ve tried to prove that reality is something defined by our senses and which is very much a relative term; human kind in fact never tries to get intimate with it. So long as what is seemingly real is keeping us satisfied what if this is not what is real!

Lama Yeshe, a renowned Tibetan monk, in his book** about Buddhist psychology writes that, "What man observes on the surface of the ocean, the waves, apparently looks real to him but not the vast water that underlies. His senses cannot perceive beyond that; which eventually leads to his interpretation of the ocean."

But this sensitization fails to uncover the reality behind those waves. And for him so long as ocean has its waves-it’ll remain real.

The raw material of our thoughts and belief comes from experience- sensory and introspective. Our thoughts are without content and our words without any meaning unless they are connected to experience. And when our initial sensitization is unreal the subsequent interpretations are flawed.

That is to say, the objects of man’s belief exists outside him as objects independent of him; but these objects are objects of his need, essential objects, indispensable to the exercise and confirmation of his essential existence. In pursuance of this man continues to believe unreal as real.

………For they say reality often bites!


**Your Mind is an ocean.(Ambitabha Publications-New Delhi.)