Realism is the beginning of the mind.

What is called 'realism' is the way the mind begins to

become conscious of itself. It is a question of consciousness. —Joseph Campbell (Tibetan,
1952) Tibetans use the term "reality" to mean the three dimensions of space, and hence the
world of phenomena. They do not speak of time. Time is not a matter of observation, but of
the consciousness that observes, so it is irrelevant for the definition of reality, which is the
world of space-time. This definition corresponds to Aristotle's conception of "to on", that is,
that which is real, a thing by itself, in contrast to all that is unreal, appearances. The world of
the senses does not correspond with the essential nature of reality. In fact, the essential nature
of reality is not the world of the senses. The essential nature of reality is not an object, but
that which the object points to, the ground, the source, the ground of being, the realm of
being as it is in and of itself. That is the definition of reality that I have found in the sutras
and in the literature. —Samyang Norbu ## What is Reality? In the West, we like to talk about
reality. That is a problem. Because there is no reality. And yet, we like to talk about that, as if
it was reality. But reality is not something that we speak about, but something that the world
of phenomena is like. "Reality" is not something that we can understand by the mind, but
something that the world of phenomena is like. Reality is not something that we can talk
about, but something that the world of phenomena is like. We have a problem with the word
"reality." When you ask a Tibetan what he means by the word "reality," he will respond, "It is
not about appearances, it is not about sensations, it is not about the mind. Reality is about the
phenomena." This is true, and so we have to study what the world of phenomena is like.
What does it mean to say that something is like the world of phenomena? In Tibetan, when
we talk about the world of phenomena, we are talking about reality. The first translation of
reality is rgyud "phenomena." We say reality is rgyud rje. You cannot say "phenomena of
phenomena," but you can say "reality of reality." The word rgyud "phenomena" is derived
from the root rgyu "appearance" which means something that arises, something that comes
up and is manifest. The word "phenomenon" is borrowed from the Latin. We need the word
"phenomena" in order to talk about this world of phenomena. A Tibetan cannot talk about the
idea of "the reality of the reality of reality." "The reality of the reality of the reality of
reality." That sounds like a paradox. Yet, you might ask, if there is no reality, what is the real
one? "The reality of the reality of the reality of reality." That sounds like a paradox. "The
reality of the reality of the reality of reality." When we are trying to understand what is
reality, we are not trying to talk about it, we are trying to talk about something that is like it,
so that we can have some way of understanding reality. The essential nature of reality is that
which the object is like. The essence of the world of phenomena is that which the object is
like, the ground of being. The Tibetan does not speak of time; it is only when we are talking
about the world of phenomena that we need to use the word "time." The essence of reality is
the time-dimension as an appearance that is part of