Hiya Mettasattva,
We're not a long way off here, it's all about clarity and tying up loose ends and finding a common language.
In the moment a thought is just a thought but to say that the thought is not reality doesnt feel right to me. That would contradict ur statement about the Buddhist tradition?
If cognition is seen as a sense, then we might think of it as the intermediary between direct experience and the 'object', so while an idea may be cognised, it's true to say that cognising happens (thoughts and feelings arise and fall) but if we think of it as the thoughts and feelings are containers, then what is inside those containers is not a real thing.
When you say that something doesn't 'feel right' to you, is that not just pure speculation?
If I think something I will get feelings from those thoughts and feelings are real in the sense that they are either pleasent or painful and I experience them. So this is all seeming like a big contradiction?
I can see that thoughts of things are different to the things themselves... but it doesn't make me see one is real and the other isn't....from a scientific point of view the things themselves are not real...in the sense that it's all matter and built of particals, ultimitly star dust :o) So in a sense nothing is real. though of course through our physical bodies we get an experience which we call real.
Can you just for a moment consider all that's been said above from a viewpoint that thoughts can only at best be considered unreliable, inaccurate or even completely wrong. If you do this, you will see that the whole defence of thoughts possibly being real, is made up of thoughts only (concepts of pleasant, painful, referrals to ideas from science etc...)
As we continue, if possible, keep that possibility open, once we get through this bit, the rest will be plain sailing :-)
Mike :-)
