Han de Wit 0202
(continued)
de Wit: We cannot say: “It’s all only a figment of our mind; it’s all maya”, as the Hindu tradition would have it. According to the Buddhists that would be too easy! We would be finished before we started! In that sense, Buddhism is a middle way between idealism and realism - to put it in philosophical terms - midway between the idea that the whole world is the creation of the mind, which is rejected, and the idea that there is a kind of objective reality that we merely perceive, which is likewise rejected. And this is because we can only know reality through our experience, a notion that we can also find in phenomenology, for example. Which of course brings up the question of which patterns there are in our minds, and how do these patterns interfere with our factual experience: do they make us gentler and wiser, or more frightened, cold-hearted, and short-sighted? How does it work? And when we discover that there are also patterns based on existential fears - the fear that everything changes, the fear that our lives will end, etc. – and then add to this the traditional themes of the great realities of our existence such as sickness, old age, and death, how do we deal with all this? Are there patterns in our minds which we fend off and deny? And if so, does this make us happy? Certainly not! So therefore we should free ourselves from them... and this brings us to the whole theme of the spiritual path.