Highlights
- To express this as precisely as possible, as I am born, I simultaneously give birth to the world I experience; I live out my life along with that world, and at my death the world I experience also dies. From the standpoint of reality, my own life experience (which in Buddhist terminology equals mind) and reality (which means the dharma or phenomena I encounter in life) can never be abstractly separated from each other. They must be identical. However, to take what I have just said and conclude that everything must therefore be “in my mind” (thinking, emotional, or psychological mind) would be to fall into another philosophical trap. On the other hand, to conclude that mind is totally dependent on the environment would be to relegate the matter of mind to a sort of naive realism. The teachings of Buddhism are neither a simplistic idealism nor some sort of environmentalism.
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