A REALITY MEDITATION
Imagine you hold a banana in your hand. What is the experience? Yellow colour, smooth texture, a fragrant and sweet taste when you peel and bite into it. What is a real banana? What is a book, what is a mountain, what is a cup or what is a computer? Zen says they are names given by the mind, to a range of sensations and thoughts in response. Zen says that these forms are empty of independent existence. Meaning they can be traced back through interconnections to a place where we end up saying I don’t know. We experience the apparent final form in our minds. Physics also says that dancing and interacting quantum fields are the only fundamental reality, not the final form of stuff we see, feel or name. Zen says that thoughts and emotions are similarly empty. Imagine a suffering thought. Most likely the suffering event is not happening at this moment. Your mind weaves various thoughts into a composite called anger, fear, jealousy, etc. These thoughts and emotions also do n