We have talked about at length in the past about inherent existence part of so-called wisdom teachings. It’s been a long time since we talked about those so in the next few episodes, I would like to revisit this topic with different examples. First of all, what really is inherent existence? If you think about most of us take the existence of all phenomena as inherent. What does that mean? Well, let’s talk about any object. A car, or a house, or clothes, or a computer, and so on. We think it exists and does not think twice about it. As a matter of fact, we think exists inherently and cling to it. This grasping or clinging is what brings the most suffering in our lives.
I know this sounds crazy. So let’s break it down. Any existence is either inherent or it is not. What is inherent existence? A phenomenon that exits from its own side is considered an inherent existence. In reality, there is no such thing. No phenomena exist from its own side. For anything to exist from its own side, either it is the same as its part or a collection of its part. There is no other possibility. Let’s take an example. This is a book. Many of you have this book. You look at this book and you say of course it exists. Now, if we just take one page from this book, would you say this is a book? For example, if you order this book from Amazon and if they only send you one page, would you say you received the book? Of course not. How about the cover page of this book? If someone only gave you a cover page, would you say it’s a book? No, you would not. So we all agree that the parts of the book are not the book. How about a collection of the parts. If I give you all the loose pages would you say it’s a book? No way you say. So there is no inherently existing book. Well, then what is this thing we called a book. It is nothing but imputation. It is a book because we called it a book. It has no inherent existence. Another way to look at this is that it is a dependent existence. I recently learned that if the person loses their eyesight say around 3 years of age. If they recover their eyesight say around the age of 40, they would not be able to see what we see. For them is just a blurb. Because that part of the brain that associates images is not developed at that age, they are never able to see the things we see. Now, if the same thing happened to them at the age of 8 when the image association is fully developed, they will be able to see what we see when they recover their eyesight. So you see, it is a dependent existence. The same things that are in our experience are not in the experience of people who have not developed image association or people who are blind.
Let’s look at this pen. Can you point to the pen? Where is the pen? Is it on your screen? Is it in my hand? You see this pen because your eye senses look at a picture of the pen, your brain interprets that as a pen. In other words, the pen is in your mind. Without your brain interpreting this object like a pen, the pen does not exist for you. In other words, it is a dependent existence.
So there are people who believe everything exists inherently meaning from their own side. As we just discussed that is just not the case. There are people who believe nothing exists at all. That is surely not the case since we are experiencing these phenomena. There is a middle way. That says that all phenomena are imputed or dependent on existence. Nothing exists inherently and all existence is imputed.
Let’s look at another example, we all have a car parked in the garage. Let’s find if the car exists inherently. For a car to exist inherently, it can either be found in its parts or it is a collection of its part. So let’s begin with its tires. If someone gave us four tires, we will certainly not call it a car. How about if someone gave us a bunch of bucket seats? Well, that is not a car. How about a door, or an engine, or brake pads? None of these parts is a car. If you take all the parts of the car put them on the ground, we won’t call it a car. So there is no inherently existing car. It is a car because we all decided to call it a car. In other words, it is an imputed existence.
Again, this is a deep subject. I would like to pick this up next week on the same topic. So we can investigate a little more to make sure that we are all on the same page as to inherent existence.