What is 'Reality'?
The Cheng Wei Shi Lun puts it in a nutshell: There is no objective reality - or rather, we cannot see it. Because of the interplay of the eight consciousnesses (see previous article), we create a subjective image of our surroundings.
As we have seen, everything which our five senses and the mind perceive is distorted by the seventh and eighth consciousness - for example, when a previous experience causes us to be stubbornly convinced that a certain situation can only have a 'bad' outcome...even though this time things might be totally different! We evaluate everything around us based on what we 'know', i. e. what we have experienced. Buddhism speaks of 'seeds' which are stored in the eighth consciousness (see previous article). These seeds are of course different for each person, because we all experience different things. Therefore, each of us lives in their own, personal reality, which may overlap in some respects with the reality of others (for example, when tourists are looking at an old building in a historic old town), but which is nevertheless never the same (one tourist will find the dilapidated building picturesque, while to the other tourist it simply appears run-down).
Self-Reflection: Can you think of similar everyday life examples of differing realities?
The problem with this is that we, as unenlightened persons, wrongly assume that our own reality is 'true', i.e. objectively valid also for others. And so, conflicts and frustration arise when other people cannot see things the way we do, or when they just cannot 'see' at all some things which appear obvious to us. Also, the bad habit of taking a subjective reality for 'truth' often leads to us making life more difficult than it is, for example, when we are overly pessimistic and are convinced that "nothing can be done anyway". The CWSL with its credo that we create our own reality at each and every moment is not nihilism, but a positive message: because it means that we always have the chance to transform a negative reality into a positive experience!
Self-Reflection: What kind of 'truths' does your OCD try to inflict on you? Reflect on why they are a subjective reality rather than objectively 'true'.
In short, the CWSL wants to point us to the fact that a 'coffee mug', for example, comes into 'existence' only when its physical form is perceived, labelled and evaluated by consciousness. That is why the CWSL teaches that everything is 'consciousness-only': because without the processing of the eight consciousnesses, there can be no experiencing a coffee mug (nor the coffee in it). The scripture therefore asserts that there really are no phenomena (dhammas) which exist truly apart from consciousness.
So, cognition always revolves around the eight consciousnesses, but there are other factors influencing and affecting them, sometimes supporting, sometimes inhibiting their function. The CWSL actually lists 100 factors which make up our experience of the world; it is a highly complex process which we do not have to discuss in detail here. However, if you are interested, here is an overview:
