“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”I've recently been pondering this Philip K. Dick line. A lion of literary science fiction, Philip's life was dogged by mental illness complicated by drug use. This led, as such things often do, to a fascination with metaphysics and transcendental philosophies. And an enduring preoccupation with reality, that thing human brains are singularly ill-suited to detect.
Perception challenges notwithstanding, I think the writer wields a sharp Zen katana here. We humans are especially apt to mistake ourselves – our cultural assumptions, our half-experienced experiences, the truisms we were taught as toddlers – for objective truth. "That's the way of the world," we say. Or, "That's just the way the world works."
Problem is, we're not talking about the world, or anything like it, when we say that. Far less any rule the world may impose.
For the benefit of those still struggling with the concept, let me take a page from Philip: the world is that thing that remains, unmoved and unchanged, when the last of us has died.
Which could be rather soon, at the rate we're going.
I find this principle a productive "empty" meditation. You know, those paradoxes we Zenners like to chase on the cushion as calisthenics for our power of perception:
"Picture an empty mirror."
"What was your face before your grandmother was born?"
"Mu."
So I sit and imagine a planet millions of years hence, unmarked by human striving.
Endless global landscapes that bear no trace of our passing.
The utter inexistence of economics or religion, art or technology, love or hate. And the profound absence of any recording witness whatsoever, anywhere on the planet.
An Earth returned to the ground of being, removed that single self-centered force of denial that dominated a second of its lifecycle, its pan plumb flashed out.
As Philip conjectured: a vast and infinite reality, entirely innocent of human delusion.
(Photo courtesy of Vadim Mivedru and Unsplash.com.)
