Dharma Quote: B. Alan Wallace

This is from Snow Lion Publications, their weekly dharma quote:

Dharma Quote of the Week

The entire environment we perceive around us arises, in part, in dependence upon our sense faculties. The environment we experience does not truly exist "out there." Sight is dependent upon visual faculties, hearing is dependent upon auditory faculties, and tactile sensations depend on nerve endings. Psychologically, all that we experience is dependent upon ourselves. We do not experience anything purely objectively. The arising and perceiving of experience is co-emergent between ourselves and the world around us. Yet, the deep belief persists that the world really exists "out there" now and eons before we were born.

The Buddhist hypothesis extends beyond the psychological. The Buddhist hypothesis is this: that which is perceived arises in dependence upon the perception of it. Things are empty of independent, inherent existence. What appears to exist" out there" is empty of objective existence from its own side. This does not mean that nothing exists apart from our perceptions. Rather, it means that by probing the nature of existence of anything we experience perceptually or conceptually, we find that nothing exists by its own independent nature. Another way of phrasing this is that appearance extends all the way down to the root and there is nothing beyond the appearances. Appearances extend down to quarks; nothing is there purely objectively and nothing is there purely subjectively. This is the Buddhist hypothesis.

~ From Buddhism with an Attitude: The Seven-Point Mind-Training by B. Alan Wallace, edited by Lynn Quirolo, published by Snow Lion Publications

For more B. Alan Wallace, you can check out Buddhist Geeks, where Ryan interviewed the man himself.

Tags: B. Alan Wallace, Buddhism, Buddhist Geeks, Dharma quote, Snow Lion Publications