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Reality as it appears to us |
According to Tibetan philosophy, perception does not take place through the senses alone, but also on a conceptual, emotional and feeling level. Reality as it appears to us is therefore strongly influenced by concepts (rtog-pa) and emotions/feelings (myong-ba), i.e. the conceptually/emotionally created reality. If a person is in an unbalanced state of mind, it is easy for others to see that the way he perceives the world bears no true relation to reality. However, even a relatively balanced person will experience good days, when everything is fine, and bad days when the whole world looks gloomy and dull. This apparent perception is therefore also to a great extent a mental creation, i.e. is not existing out there in itself the way we perceive it.
On a general level we share a common ground in a certain culture and within a certain society, where we agree on the conventions of naming and giving values. But this does not imply that the naming, the named objects in themselves, or the agreed values have objective truth – we are simply partaking in a collective view of reality.
The only normal yardstick remaining for contacting reality is thus sense perception. But even here, we can only refer to the human senses as co-creators of a shared human reality. Were our body condition to change, our (sense) reality would also change. Subjective sense perception and the perceived object are therefore a interdependently created interrelationship. Beyond the sense perception (subject) and the sense reality (object), a deeper level of reality is to be found where subject and object unite, leading to a new way of perceiving reality as a continuous movement of mutually determined exchange and interconnectedness.
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