Mention of the doctrine of "only mind" may be called for to clarify statements in the scripture to the effect that all things are creations of mind. This does not mean creation in the sense of creating something out of nothing. This doctrine means that practically speaking the world only "exists" as such because of our awareness, and that what we take to be the world in itself is our experience and inference based thereon. The conceptual order which is taken to be characteristic of objective reality is, according to this doctrine, a projection of the mind, a description that filters and shapes experience in accord with mental habits developed throughout the history of the species, the civilization, and the individual. Techniques of visualization, meditation, concentration, and trance are used in part to detach the mind from fixation on a given conceptual and perceptual order through cultivation of other ways of perceiving and conceiving, and through experience of other spheres, which are equally real to the senses. By mastering attention and realizing the relativity of world and mind through actual experience as well as reasoning, one may then gain freedom while in the midst of the world, having [...] mastered mind rather than being mastered by it. (p. 1529)
Excerpted from "Technical Terminology and Symbolism" in The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra
by Thomas Cleary
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