Somebody could say, “Why bother? Why should I care about knowing how to directly perceive reality?” That is an excellent question. The point of the Buddhist teachings is that the direct perception of reality is necessary in order to be truly free. Our capacity to learn how to directly perceive reality is the sine qua non for traversing the path. In fact, how free we are depends on how directly we perceive reality.
These days in the West, any talk of a true reality is regarded by many as rather suspect. There are those who would say, “It’s a matter of opinion,” “One man’s meat is another man’s poison,” or “Life is just as you like”—anything goes. This is what the Buddha called nihilistic. So the notion of “the direct perception of reality” is, perhaps, the most important definition of Abhidharma.
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