When I see a cloud in the shape of a squirrel, where is the squirrel?
In my mind.
There is no squirrel there. What I’m looking at is a roiling mass of atoms and molecules that come together in this particular configuration for a fleeting moment in time, a configuration that happens to match a shape I have come to name, “squirrel.” Maybe someone else called the shape by that name and I stored it away. So I see this un-nameable moment of flowing universe and project my idea “squirrel” onto it.
Here’s the thing:
I am doing the exact same thing when I see an “actual” squirrel.
There is no squirrel there. What I’m looking at is a roiling mass of atoms and molecules that come together in this particular configuration for a fleeting moment in time, a configuration that happens to match a shape I have come to name, “squirrel.” Maybe someone else called the shape by that name and I stored it away. So I see this un-nameable moment of flowing universe and project my idea “squirrel” onto it.
All of life is this way. Everything I experience about the world is just me imagining onto reality what arises in my mind.
I’m daydreaming my world into existence.
When I know it, why would I ever knowingly imagine anything troubling onto my clouds, except for the fun of playing in my imagination?