All Is Mind-Made

Buddhism claims form is emptiness. Is the mind itself, then, “real”?

If “real” means the unchanging and primal, and “illusory” means the derived — well, all things are interconnected and changing, and there may be no absolute fixed point at all. But to observe and understand, we need an anchor — or, in coordinate terms, a fixed point — so the other variables can be explained as variations relative to it. That’s just for convenience. In practice we can pick different anchors, the way we pick whichever coordinate system best fits the situation.

Hence: all is mind-made. Because the mind picks a focal point, carves out a limited window/dimension of the space/network, and forms perception within it. Change the focal point / attention / anchor / perspective, change the size / angle / dimension of the window, and the “reality” we perceive changes. But the web of dependent origination hasn’t changed — only our perception has. The mind is a mold, a filter, a window. Take the same story and replay it with someone else as the protagonist — first-person POV — and what you perceive is entirely different.