If you have ever watched a football game, you will likely recall that while the game is being

played,
there is a commentator who is narrating the plays of the game and making interpretations. Our
thoughts are just like this. In our mind, we have the direct experience and we have the commentator
that narrates and describes our direct experience.
The commentator of a football game isn’t really necessary, and he doesn’t affect the activity of the
game in any way. He is just describing the game to the audience, and doing so from his perspective,
with his own opinions, based on his mood, memory, education, past experiences and so on. In
ourselves, the commentator is also unnecessary, and does not change the experience that it is
commenting on. It merely describes it from its own biased perspective, with its own opinions, based
on its mood, memory, education, past experiences, and so on.
Our problem is that we have mistaken the comments of the commentator for the reality that is being
commented on. We have confused our own identity as being that of the commentator, and we
believe that what is being described is actually the truth of reality.

Zen would say that in adopting, too completely, the scientific view of reality we have closed the
door on a more holistic view of life and are limiting ourselves to a rather mundane view of
something altogether extraordinary.

Zen maintains that our dualistic view of life means that whatever we perceive goes through our
mental filtering systems before being cognitively understood. We use mental boxes for all aspects of
our daily lives so we can make sense of our world and interact with oth- ers. With the development
of language, though, this cognitive grasp of reality means that everything we perceive is subject to
these men- tal processes, and so from early childhood we lose the ability to directly perceive the
world. This is the point where dualism starts.