Perspective and Reaction

Today, I was in a team meeting, watching a piece of fluff floating down from the ceiling about 2 feet from my face. No emotion, no investment, just watching.

And then...

IT WASN'T A FLUFF IT WAS A SPIDER!!!!! Lowering its horrific self down on a strand of silk.

Now, I'm afraid of spiders, so I screamed and jetted backwards on my rolley chair into the wall with such force that I left a dent the wall. Once they figured out what happened, someone else squished it.

Moments later. I felt silly and ashamed of myself. Not because I'd interrupted the meeting with my panic, but because I'd been unfair to that spider, and that it was dead. I'd let my reaction propel my behaviour.

Between when it was a fluff and when it was a spider, nothing had changed in the thing that was in front of me. It was only my perception of it. It was my own mind that forced it from serene observation to panic and revulsion.

Could this mean that so many of the things that we're afraid of (or disagree with, or hate, or get angry about, etc...) are really just a matter of perception? Do we base our reactions on our perceptions when maybe we shouldn't?

Could this mean that so many of the things that we're afraid of (or disagree with, or hate, or get angry about, etc...) are really just a matter of perception? Do we base our reactions on our perceptions when maybe we shouldn't?

My nigh-non-existant understanding of senses is that...this whole dang world is just made up of what your brain things you want to see

I try to apply some Pratchett "Witch" logic to this...

"They can see what is really there"

Explanation by ol' Terry

"As a witch, Tiffany possesses First Sight, the ability to see 'what is really there' (as opposed to second sight, which shows people what they think ought to be there). She also possesses Second Thoughts, which are defined as 'the thoughts you think about the way you think'. Whilst other witches are said to have this trait as well, Tiffany also recognizes some of her thoughts as Third Thoughts (the thoughts you think about the way you think about the way you think), and Fourth Thoughts (the thoughts you think about the way you think about the way you think about the way you think). All these thoughts sometimes cause Tiffany to walk into door frames."

One of the ideas that gets sort of hammered into us at the local Buddhist centre is that all objects appear to us to fall into one of three categories - pleasant, neutral or unpleasant.

We perceive these categories very strongly, as though they are an actual inherant characteristic of the thing - for instance, the first thing that comes to mind for me when I think of a brussels sprout is 'disgusting'. It is very difficult for me to not consider disgustingness to be part of the nature of a brussels sprout, because I have never experienced it in any other way, and that experience stands out to me more than the green colour, or the round shape, or any other characteristic. It doesn't occur to me in that moment that plenty of people actually like brussels sprouts, and therefore the unpleasant taste is clearly not an intrinsic characteristic of brussels sprouts at all...

We do exactly the same with people - we see some people as beautiful, lovely, etc and others as ugly, unpleasant and so on. But there will be others who totally disagree with our assessment - someone who one person finds faultless might be considered repulsive by someone else, and vice versa. (And we sometimes treat people differently based on these perceptions - for instance, when we have an idea in our head that someone is 'an irritating person', sometimes we will find ourselves feeling annoyed with them before they even open their mouth...)

So from this point of view it is non-sensical to treat things differently based on such distinctions, because we can see that any person or thing cannot have an intrinsically good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant nature. That said, it's a little tricky when the 'unpleasantness' is linked to considering something dangerous or frightening - I would probably react a little more to a spider than I would to a piece of fluff too, and it's much harder to condition ourselves out of those sorts of reactions!

But in general, it's probably no bad thing to try to practice developing a mind of a little more equanimity (the Buddhist virtue that this relates to), whether that be in a general sense or more towards specific people/things, as I'm sure we all have at least a few particular examples that we can think of where we could do a little better - we can find that the things we (often for no particular reason at all) regard as very unpleasant and also very pleasant have an alarming degree of control over our emotions and resulting behaviour...

Twelve

The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.

Leah Starspectre wrote: Could this mean that so many of the things that we're afraid of (or disagree with, or hate, or get angry about, etc...) are really just a matter of perception? Do we base our reactions on our perceptions when maybe we shouldn't?

I feel that answer is "Yes..."...

First, let me start by saying… awesome story. I realize that for you it probably wasn’t a fun experience or even funny. But I was dying reading it. :woohoo: :silly: :laugh:

Our perception does form a lot of our reality. And yes, we do tend to react to things based on our perception of them at the time. One good thing is that perceptions do change over time. And that we are reprogrammable… meaning, we can learn not to be that way all the time. :ohmy:

And one thing you illustrated so well is how our reaction to something can dramatically change as our perception of it changed. Again, good story. Thank you for sharing. :laugh:

Wescli Wardest wrote: First, let me start by saying… awesome story. I realize that for you it probably wasn’t a fun experience or even funny. But I was dying reading it. :woohoo: :silly: :laugh:

I t wasn't funny right when it happened, but once I caught myself in that perception shift, I laughed about it. And still am

Imagine the perception of the spider!

"Hey, look at the big harmless thing ignoring me down there. I'm curious. Let's go check it out. Seems interesting enough... HEY! Where are you going? OH CRAP WHAT IS THAT(squish)..."

Now her spider friends are going to have a new perspective and react differently too. You may have inadvertently created a whole generation of people hating spiders :laugh:

Leah Starspectre wrote: Could this mean that so many of the things that we're afraid of (or disagree with, or hate, or get angry about, etc...) are really just a matter of perception?

i think the obvious answer to this is "yes"
but id also mention that people have aversions to insects and arachnids as a consequence of the fact that many of them are extremely dangerous

under other circumstances your immediate reaction might have prevented serious injury to yourself or a loved one

Leah Starspectre wrote: Do we base our reactions on our perceptions when maybe we shouldn't?

what else could we base our reactions on?

limited as our perceptions may be, what alternatives do we have?

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EDIT
and do you really mean perceptions when you ask this question?
could you specify a little more-be a little more precise?

There is a lot of precedent of this sort of idea, even just from Star Wars movies.

"From a certain point of view."

"Your focus determines your reality."

Things like that.

We've had loads of discussions here about how perception is everything. To the spider the humans are horrible monsters. To the humans that spider was gross and a potential problem. To many western countries ISIS is evil. To the members of ISIS the West is evil.

That is why Jedi try to cultivate empathy, so that we can, hopefully, see things from different perspectives.