Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c21.s2.3

c21.s2.3

External reality cannot possibly exist;³ if it did it could not possibly be known, and it is obviously absurd to assert the existence of something of which it is certain that we can have no knowledge. We must recognize that we have in the world as it appears to us the result of mental construction; a perception involves an apparent datum,⁴ but all that is known is essentially the network of mental construction which is imposed on this datum, and we cannot speak of the datum as anything external; without the mental construction it is simply nothing; it is, perhaps we may hold, the fact of the arising in consciousness as a result of past experience of a new content, which thus appears to be given, and not to be our own creation, but which on ultimate analysis is essentially the product of thought. There is no real external water, but our sense construction of smoothness produces this impression; similarly sense constructions of heat and movement produce our belief in external fire and wind. There is apparently an external chain of causation e. g. from seed to plant, but this is due only to our habit of projection of reality; we apply names and ideas (*nāmasamjñāvyavahāra*), and by this means we are the real sources of the apparent causal development conceived as without us.¹