“Such ones do not take anything seen, heard, or thought to be ultimately true or false. But others get attached, thinking it is the truth, limited by their preconceptions.” Buddha Shakyamuni, Angutarra Nikaya

i. What does this mean to me?

This is a direct quote from the historical Buddha. What did he mean by “such ones”? The Buddha is referring to those who, like him, are enlightened. We call these enlightened ones ‘Buddhas’, which simply means those who are awake.

If we look carefully at the scripture, it’s saying that enlightened ones or ‘Buddhas’ don’t take anything they see, hear, or even think “to be ultimately true or false.” Why not? All that we see, hear or think are internal mental representations. We can understand this by considering how we interact with the known world. There’s no question that we can’t physically fit a dining room table into our head. Even if it’s from a dollhouse, it still won’t fit.

But yet, we know what a dining room table is. How do we know that? Because we’ve seen countless dining room tables. This being the case, we’ve created a mental image and labeled it ‘dining room table’. The same is true of any phenomenon. If you think about windchimes in a mild breeze, you’d hear the sound of windchimes, right?

But is the sound really there at that moment? No. The sound itself is an internal mental representation. With thoughts, it’s a lot easier to understand this. The only interactions we ever have with our thoughts are as internal mental representations. After all, we can’t take a thought out of our head and hold it in the palm of our hand, can we?

If we look back at the verse, this is what the Buddha is saying. Buddhas (those who are awake) understand that all their experience is internal mental representations. This is why Buddhas don’t take anything in their experience to be “ultimately true or false.”

Buddhists are not nihilists. We know there is an external ultimate truth. But due to the limitations of our mind and bodies, we can’t know what it is. Those who are enlightened understand that the internal mental representations we experience are nothing but ideas about what ultimate reality might be. Based on our everyday experience, we can’t say whether or not our internal mental representations reflect some truth about ultimate reality.

The Buddha goes on to say that “others” (those who have not yet realized their own enlightenment) “get attached, thinking it is the truth, limited by their preconceptions.” All that stops us from realizing our enlightenment are our preconceptions, namely wrong views and afflicted emotions. If, the Buddha is saying, we can resolve just these two things, we will realize the truth of our own enlightenment.

ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

I’d start by asking them to describe a dining room table. If they describe a rectangular table, I’d ask if a dining room table could be round. Of course, the answer is yes. Now there’s a dilemma. Which table is the ‘real’ dining room table? Is it the round one or the rectangular one? This is kind of a trick question. The answer is that neither is the ‘real’ table. We know there is an ultimate truth that ‘dining room table’ refers to, but we don’t know what that ultimate truth is.

The Buddha says that “…others get attached thinking it is the truth, limited by their preconceptions.” In the world as we experience it, there is entropy. Things fall apart. Even people fall apart. The Buddha taught that there are four signs of ultimately reality: true purity, true bliss, true permanence, and true being. I like to add a fifth one to help me understand, “no retrogression”. Ultimate reality is not subject to entropy.

Because entropy is our only experience with ‘reality’, we become attached to this point of view and take it to be the truth of how things are. But ultimate reality is not subject to anything in samsara. In fact we could argue whether or not ultimate reality is part of samsara. It’s not. Samsara is a realm of illusion. Ultimate reality is . . . well . . . real.

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

Samsara gets so much airtime in the mind. It surrounds, inundates and penetrates the mind until through sheer repetition, we believe it to be true.

This is why it’s so important to recite prayer or mantra whenever we can, wherever we can. I have a wonderful new practice (new to me) that helps a great deal. It’s called Ten by Ten. It means ten times a day pause to take ten slow deep breaths. For me, I recite “Ohm” with each in-breath.

I find this helpful because it ‘pokes holes’ in the false reality of samsara. For a few moments at a time, I can focus on just my breath, just rest in the empty luminosity of the mind. And in those fleeting moments I see through the illusion of samsara, a few seconds at a time.

And really, that’s all it takes. Enlightenment is easy. If we can, for any length of time escape the illusion of solidity that samsara imposes, we can see through the illusory quality of samsara. And with this clear seeing, we can experience our true enlightened selves, our own Buddha Nature, if only for a few moments.