Fundamental Flaw

Wrong thoughts are our personal opinions, which arise in response to external sensory stimuli. Relying on this sensory input, we think about what we have encountered and draw conclusions based on what we have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched. Then, we begin to label some things good and others bad, some pleasant and others unpleasant. In other words, we begin to discriminate, seeing duality in everything.

The fundamental flaw in this process is the reliance on our senses. What we fail to consider is the fact that our breadth of exposure is minimal at best and that our senses may well be faulty. Consider the Buddha’s account of a group of men blind from birth trying to describe an elephant. Each of the men was taken to a different part of the elephant: its head, an ear, a tusk, its trunk, its stomach, a foot, its tail, and the tuft of its tail. The blind men in turn said that the elephant was like a pot, a basket, a ploughshare, a plow, a storehouse, a pillar, a pestle, and a brush. The men then began to argue with one another and even came to blows over the matter.

These reasonable but limited answers were the result of knowing only a part of the truth, not the whole. And sadly, like those blind men, most of us also encounter only a part of the truth. We, too, cling stubbornly to our own viewpoints, convinced that we have all the facts. And thinking that we have all the facts and feeling confident of our conclusions, we reject the views of others. Thus, our ignorance arises from our wrong thoughts. The manifestation of our ignorance is our attachment to our wrong thoughts, and this inevitably intensifies our ignorance.