Nothing’s Real

Topics: dhamma, phenomenology 2024-12-09 00:55

All one can perceive is one’s own perceptions. One can never know how ‘real’ what one perceives is, because to do that would require one to perceive things from not only one’s current point of view, but then also a second, external point of view to validate the ‘realness’ of what was being perceived by the first point of view. But this second point of view would no longer be external if it was perceived, alongside one’s original point of view, and thus it would also suffer from the same inherent existential ambiguity as the first point of view. One could introduce any number of additional points of view into their experience, and it could not solve the problem. There is no possible way to validate the ‘objective’ validity of what one experiences from one’s point(s) of view. No matter how much one perceives, or from how many points of view, one can never perceive things from a point of view beyond what their perception presents them with—this is impossible by definition, because it is a contradiction in terms. Thus one can never possibly overcome the existential ambiguity inherent to any conceivable experience and find something that is ‘really real’.

Everything someone experiences, no matter how unusual, is as real as anything else they experience. In this sense, everything is real. And if everything is real, then nothing is, because the word ‘real’ becomes meaningless. This line of thinking takes some time to get used to, but after one has become accustomed to it, one becomes unable to see things the way one used to. The idea of things being ‘real’ or not, in the sense of ‘objectively, independently existent in the external world’ no longer even makes sense.