Somebody very close to me once told me that "perception is reality." It didn't click with me until years later. I thought "right was right" and "wrong was wrong." When someone did something wrong, I felt justified in making a judgment that he or she was wrong. However, something inside of me always told me that maybe I was too rigid in my judgment-maybe I was rationalizing my position. Most of the time I dismissed that part of me by thinking of something else.
The older I got, the harder it became to dismiss that little voice. My world got bigger, and I met more people. I became a wife, mother, and teacher. This led to more and more complicated situations. My list of "do's and don'ts" often were not applicable. Things got confusing and things became grayer instead of black and white.
Perception in the dictionary is defined as: "becoming aware of through the senses; especially to see or hear." I saw a documentary recently of a group of people who lived on a small Pacific island. These people were all related and had a genetic defect in their eyes. They were all completely color blind. They only saw black, white, and shades of gray. Their eyes were also very sensitive to light. Their eyes lacked the cone cells which enable us to see color. Can you imagine how they view the world? Things may blend into other things because they can't see color differences. On the other hand, they evidently can see better at night than we can.
We all perceived things differently. We all have different frames of reference or points of view. This is why we get involved in conflicts. Nothing is absolute; try teaching physics, as I do. One of the most difficult concepts to get across to my students during the first semester is the idea of relativity.
I have to convince them that nothing is absolutely still and nothing is absolutely in motion. Everything must be compared with something else. You are still in your seats relative to me, but relative to someone on the moon, you are moving. The earth revolves around its axis. It also travels around the sun. The sun is part of the Milky Way Galaxy and moves within it. The whole galaxy is moving, too. There are about a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and we are aware of about a hundred billion galaxies, all in motion.
Einstein said that the faster we move the slower time becomes. The cosmic speed limit is about 186,000 miles per second-the speed of light. He said that the closer we move to the speed of light, the slower times becomes. If we reach the speed of light, time becomes zero. Isn't this hard to perceive?
Einstein was right. The Apollo astronauts were traveling faster than we are on the earth when they traveled to the moon. When they came back, their atomic clocks (which were synchronized with Houston) were about 20 minutes, I believe, slower than the clocks in Houston. They were 20 minutes younger than the people on earth!!
Nothing is absolute. We are not absolute creatures. We all have the possibility of being good and bad. We are all capable of doing wonderful things or ending up in jail.
I learned something about Buddhism a few years ago. I learned that there is no such thing as forgiveness in Buddhism. I was shocked to hear that from a minister until he explained his position further. He said that to forgive means that the person doing the forgiving has to come from a higher plane than the one being forgiven. In Buddhism, we are all equal. This is one of the greatest contributions of Buddhism-we are all equal. In other words, we all have the same capacity to do good things or bad things. The person forgiving is no better or worse potentially than the person being forgiven.
Instead of forgiveness, we Buddhists offer our compassion and support for each other. We realize (hopefully) that under the same conditions, we may very well have behaved the same way as the one that has done wrong.
Perceptions and points of view must be examined from all angles to get a clear understanding of the situation. This refers to the first statement of the Eightfold Noble Path-right view. If we can do that, we can understand the condition of life. I know I'll never be fully aware of my shortcomings, but I hope I'll always strive toward that awareness. In the meantime, I have a greater understanding of the phrase "perception is reality."