I read your reply to my question whether past life recollections are reliable.
I am confused that you said that in ultimate reality all that exists is mind and body.
What do you mean?
I hesitate because it's a difficult question to answer.
It's not a question that should be answered.
from an intellectual point of view because I can give you the answer and I will but I want to preface it by saying that the only thing that's going to help is if you actually start looking at ultimate reality this is the first thing you have to learn in meditation is what are the building blocks of reality and so now you know my answer you should see what your answer is when you look at ultimate reality what do you see
But the way you can understand my answer is
in terms of how I define ultimate reality.
What do I mean by ultimate reality?
Because people have many different ways of defining the word reality.
I define reality based on the first principle, the first... So language fails us, no?
The...
starting point of everything if you do even if you do experiments on third third person on impersonal it's a quote-unquote objective reality and physical reality the physical world out there you're still required to approach it from the point of view of your own experiences
There's this neat thing about quantum physics that requires the experimenter.
You have to know what the observation is before you can talk about what the results will be.
Without knowing
Without something being experienced, there's no way to talk about the outcome.
This is the quandary that came up out of quantum physics, as I understand it.
So, this is great evidence for the fact that reality has to start with experience.
Which, from Buddha's point of view, it's really a silly... From a person who's seen ultimate reality, it's really a silly thing to even talk about.
Because...
Obviously, what exists, right here, right now, is what exists.
Experience is what exists.
There's nothing else exists.
The Sun doesn't exist.
Pluto doesn't exist.
Mars doesn't exist.
Solar systems don't exist.
All of these things, they only exist up here.
They exist in our mind.
We think about them.
We say, yes, that's the Sun.
that's the moon this is grass this is a tree and so on but actually what is it it's seeing hearing smelling tasting feeling and thinking that's all that's real these are the only the only aspects of ultimate reality meaning they're the only things that can be experienced all that can ever possibly be experienced is seeing hearing smelling tasting feeling and thinking
And what are the constituents of these six things?
What are the constituents of these experiences, of experience in general?
And if you observe it, you will see that there are two constituents.
One is the physical, one is the mental.
So, for example, when the stomach rises, well, the stomach is, theoretically, it's rising and falling all the time.
But if the mind is not there, there's no experience of it.
So without the mental, there's no experience of rising.
But if the stomach doesn't rise, then even if the mind is there,
there will still not be any experience of rising.
Without the body and the mind, the feeling of rising can't arise.
If your eye is good, and there's light touching the eye, but your mind is somewhere else, there's no seeing.
If your eyes are not good, and the mind is there, there still is no seeing.
If your eyes are closed, even you put your mind there, you still don't see anything.
If the lights are out, if you turn out the lights, you still don't see anything.
So the physical and the mental are the two constituents of experience.
That's what is meant by body and mind is all that exists.
Because we define existence as experience.
And we're only... Whether you want to define existence as something else, we're not concerned with that.
All that we're concerned with as Buddhists is the reality of experience.
That to us is...
is their equivalent reality and experience.