The Dude: Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, uh, your opinion man.
We are all born with this amazing awareness. We have senses acutely tuned into life on earth. Our eyes provide us with amazing pictures of reality. Our ears bring us the sounds of life. Likewise, our senses of smell, taste and touch round out our contact with the great reality around us.
My question to you is "if we are not thinking, is that reality same or different?" A corollary might be "if we are not thinking, are we the same or different?" So what is your answer to each question?
Well, we all start with the same reality. As an aside, can we be separate from this reality? The science behind this senses is quite solid. Our eyes behold color due to the photons registering on our visual sensors. Our ears gives us the sound only after being stimulated by the sound waves. The rest of the senses require contact too. Where is this separateness?
Back to reality. At this moment, there is one reality. Our senses give us as much of it as we can contact - directly or through other mediums such as TV and the telephone. As soon as that reality appears, we start to process it. And, as soon as we start to process it, the one reality disappears and becomes a personal version of reality. With 7 billion people on the planet that's a lot of different views!
Many people don't share the same views. One person's "good" is another person's "bad." One person's misery is another person's happiness. Reality, now filtered through conditioning and desire, becomes personal reality and opinion forms. The hamster wheel keeps turning.
If we try to wrap our brain around reality, we run into the deep questions. Such as, how can reality be good, and contain the holocaust, or the plague? Or How can reality be bad, with the smile of a child or the simple joy of music? That is biting the hook!
We put it all down. We stop judging reality as good or bad. We return to this present moment. We can also try to help reduce suffering, even if only a little. One way we can do that is by not defending our opinions so forcefully. Maybe we can realize that we just don't know what is good or bad. Reality is simply what is.
