How does the wise one perceive the world?

Without any support and eager for the attainment of freedom, the fools only keep up the world!

The wise cut at the very root of this world, which is the source of all misery.

~ Ashtavakra Gita (Chapter 18, Verse 38)

Acharya Prashant: What is this world? The world that you perceive around yourself is very little of a fact. You perceive it. And that’s what mostly it is — a perception, a perception raised by the perceiver.

It would be a fallacy to think that if you are looking at the green here, or the blue up there, the tree, the building, the motorcar, then you are just seeing ‘the green’ or ‘the blue’ or ‘the tree’, or ‘the motorcar’.

We do not see things, we see meanings.

We see meanings.

And why do we see meanings?

Because we sense a certain meaninglessness about ourselves.

We want to fill it up.

We do not like the meaninglessness, so we want to fill up the meaninglessness with meanings coming from the entire world.

Now, the world as such has no meaning whatsoever. The grass is just ‘grass’, the sky is just ‘the sky’, but we imbue it, load it, superimpose on it a meaning. That meaning is not an inherent property of the…