Hello and welcome to another episode of the secular Buddhism podcast. This is episode number 143.

I am your host Noah Rosheta. Today I'm going to share some thoughts around the topic of perception.

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In this podcast episode I thought it would be fun to share some thoughts regarding perception specifically from a Buddhist perspective.

You'll recall the Buddhist teaching of the five aggregates. These are form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness.

These five aggregates are the bundles or the heaps that make up who or perhaps how we are. And the implication here is that perception plays a key role in how I go about experiencing my reality.

I wanted to correlate all of this with an expression that I'm sure you've heard. It's a common expression that says beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And this expression suggests that beauty doesn't exist on its own, but it arises in the one doing the observing. And I think that's a fascinating thought.

And I want to correlate this with the expression with the Buddhist understanding of the role that perception plays and how we experience things.

So all of this started recently with a trip that I was on. I was in Moab and Moab, if you don't know, is a very scenic place in Utah famous for the arches and several other national parks.

The thought that I had while I was there, of course, I'm experiencing Moab from the air from a paraglider, a powered paraglider. And as I was flying through there, I had a similar thought that I've had many times while traveling, which is, wow, this is so much fun.

Wow, this is such a beautiful place. And followed pretty closely to the thought that says, you know, people come from all over the world to see this.

And then the reminder that any place is like that. This one happens to be very unique and beautiful, but all places are.

And I remember one time when I was traveling, I was in Bali and I was walking through the rice patties on a day trip tour.

And I would see the locals tend into the rice patties. And I remember feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the landscape and the beauty of the place. It just felt like such a neat experience.

And the thought occurred to me that if I could pick someone from here out of their rice patty and take them to my home, they would probably have a similar feeling walking through the streets and the trails behind my house and thinking how neat it is to recognize that again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And for someone who's there local, this scenery that to a visitor is so unique and so different and so beautiful to them is just ordinary day to day view.

And the same thing happens to me, my normal view where I live may become ordinary and, you know, I think I have to go far to experience this beauty when in reality the beauty is it's everywhere because it's in the eye of the beholder.

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