can we see the world as it really is?

Can we really see reality and not concepts???

How much we miss the world when we stick to labels!! Lets take an example in every day terms...suppose we look at a tree, our eyes perceive the tree, an image appears in our mind, compares the image that we have about tree with the current image and our mind immediately labels the object as tree. We do similarly the same with other human being (object) and compare the image with current image and label the object as Ram or Seeta or Sheila or John.

Actually the object that we are perceiving are “called” tree or human being or stone; but we perceive them through the color of the image in our mind and that too an image which existed in the past. And to add insult to injury as it may seem, we even perceive our body, mind or whatever through the historical image recorded and continuously overlayed with more images most of which are completely wrong or nonsensical. Think how much we miss the beauty of the world and the human being by labelling!

Comments

deepa said…
I agree only partially. We all need to have the same image of a tree otherwise there will be total confusion if one person perceives a tree as a tree and the other perceives it as a bird. Anyway coming to the actual point u are making, when we set up preconceived notions about people in our mind or look at them thru prejudiced looking glass, our judgement does get coloured. We end up putting people in neat pigeon holes duly classified and labelled as in a departmental store and may miss out on their actual beauty of being what they are. Of course having said that, one should definitely listen to what their heart tells them about people because if you honestly and truly listen to your heart, your judgement never goes wrong. In that case judgement does involve a little bit of labelling which cannot be avoided
5:23 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

religion, spirituality and secularism

I had listened to Oprah talk about religion and spirituality specially with regard to Eckhart Tolle's book and how people prefer to be spiritual than religion; and I also went back to the days when it was and probably is fashionable to be secular rather than religious. Today I was going through a buddhist lecture and it struck me hard.. I remember about 2 years or more when i wanted to convey to egroup moderator as to why Hinduism was not a religion and is simply a path and probably the British or Westerners grouped the multiple paths or "marga" in India into one single "religion" for convenience or divide and rule. And the reason for this is that being religious as opposed to being secular or spiritual implies that one is fanatic or backward or whaterver; when all that happens with people is that some of them follow the path prescribed by some authority be it church or a priest or a rabbi or whatever while others prefer the path of "thinking" and fol...
Read more

Driving -some thougts

Driving does give lots of time for musing.. imagine driving for about 4 hours every day! The other day there was quite a lot of traffic (more than usual) and the cars sort of getting stuck into a loop. There was such a cacophony of noise inspite of the fact that one could really do nothing till one auto (three wheeler vehicle - a larger version of a scooter with space for three people and a driver) moved about one inch (slight exaggeration). and thought to myself about Reinhold Niebuhr's serenity quote " Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change". and then the other interesting thing that happens is when someone cuts a car. The horn by the driver of the car reminds one of how a dog barks when someone accidentally touches hurts its tails. and when you try to overtake the other car, that is the time he/she suddenly wants to go fast and horns away to glory.. this is not to say that i dont do all these - these days i am able to observe and hence it has re...
Read more

my first ultramarathon at Banglore ultra 2008

It seems so long ago- yes, 16th November 2008 was a memorable day since I completed my first ultra marathon (which for the uninitiated means at least 50 Kms of running) and the interesting part was that i have never run a full marathon before :), it was tougher trail than the previous year and i was just thinking, i almost cancelled the trip. We reached the previous night at ONV (www. our native village .com) a nice ecofriendly place on the outskirts of Bangalore at a place called Hessarghatta. We all went by a bus from Cubbon park to ONV- we were regaled on the way by A1 (Arvind) on what was in store for us on the trail and boy was he right to warn us (and more of that later). We met some of the runners who also stayed overnight; had lots of food (carb loading) and this is one of the best part of running ultra. Another major part of this year's ultra was the fabulous running by Santosh (who became record holder of running 156 km in India (Bangalore Ultra -2008), yes not kidding)-...
Read more