What we See ?
What do we see when we look outward though our eyes. This question may be not important to some but to me its essential. This is the most important question of all, if we understand this the next thing to understand is just how to see clearly, like they say to fix a problem you first have to know the problem.I am not talking here of colours or biology prospective but how we see things people around us. This is a basis to our relationship to the world.
When we look outward we see some picture forming on our minds canvas, ordinarily mind does not understand pictures is understand labels, or by other words meaning attached tot those pictures, or definition of those pictures. So every picture goes through a filter. This filters is our past. By our past mean our memory, which is different to all of us. When images pass thought this filter what we see is not the image but our interpretation of the image from our learning or our memory. Its okay for the most part as long as objects are concerned, like we should be able to tell the difference between tree and Duck. But in case of living beings its a problem.
When we see a man (or woman ) we just don’t see that image but all our memory connected to that face or sometimes even similar face based on race, colour, voice modulations, face expression, tone everything matters for our filters. We do this so quickly that sometime I wonder how much processing power our brain has. So we never meet actual people but the their image formed by our brain. But why it matters.
It matter because our filter are or labels are also made from image of images, so thinking has no value in such case and based on no logic most of the part but our emotions and feelings. So we see world with not our logic but feelings so for example if you already have a point of view towards a person , you wont understand the meaning of the person speaking but you will put meaning in his words, if you are able to find that meaning you are trying to find okay, it reassure your filter or label, otherwise you will feel frustrated as your brain is doing extra work to label person now, which is hard work.
To me, cultivate this impartial true point of view is the most important thing. Basically looking at things as they are is what makes everything clear and remove confusion.In matter of change we expect in our self or this world, the hardest thing to change in this world is personal point of view. Even in Buddha eight fold path first practice is Right View.
Comments & Discussion
4 comments on this post. Please login to view member comments and participate in the discussion.