Perception

Perception. How does it take place? And what does it have to do with our conceptual frameworks?

We might offer a rather iconoclastic answer to this question: people with different conceptual schemes see the world differently. If we take this view to its logical conclusion, we would say that our perception gets colored by concept and that we don’t really perceive the world at all but only our version of it. Let’s accept this as partly true, agreeing that we don’t register “the world” precisely “as it is” all the time.

Both scientists and meditators alike might have a great interest in these matters. Scientists might try to do objective tests involving the organs of perception; and many of them will acknowledge (as many have already acknowledged) that our concepts influence our reports on what we perceive. Meditators – particularly Buddhist ones – won’t reject the information that comes from these studies, but they have a slightly different set of questions to ask about the matters in question. In particular, they will want to know what these matters have to do with ego-clinging.

So when Buddhists talk about the 3rd skandha, the aggregate of perception, they want to investigate the relationship between perception and ego. They will want to see more clearly the way we cling to our perceptions – the way we cling to our various versions of perceptual information. In analytical meditation, they will ask, quite simply, “Do I find self-nature in these perceptions?”

Buddhist teachings contains some very precise descriptions of what happens at the perceptual level. As we saw in our previous installment, Buddhist teachings distinguish clearly between the sense organ, the sense faculty, the object of perception, and the mind that interprets the perception. Furthermore, they do not equate “mental cognition” with “concept,” holding that not all mental functions have to do with concept. One can know without concept.

However, despite the precision of Buddhist teachings on perception, most Buddhists take an interest in the input of scientists, even though those Buddhists will note that the scientific work doesn’t always speak to their main concerns (those involving ego). But it does seem that Buddhists and scientists agree on one (albeit somewhat general) conclusion: we do not find a simple, one-to-one correspondence between what we perceive and what “is really there.” Both Buddhists, investigating in internal laboratories, and scientists, investigating largely in external ones, wish to know more precisely.