a thing is a think

  

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A separate self is merely conventional reality, in the same sense as lines of latitude and longitude and the measurements of the clock; which is why one of the means of maya, illusion, is measurement. 

Things are measurements; they are units of thought, like inches are measurements. There are no things in physical nature.

How many things is a thing? However many you want. A  “thing” is a “think”, a unit of thought; it is as much reality as you can catch hold of in one idea.

—Alan Watts

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What I mean by ‘thought’ is the whole thing — thought, ‘felt’, the body, the whole society sharing thoughts — it’s all one process. It is essential for me not to break that up, because it’s all one process; somebody else’s thought becomes my thought, and vice versa. Therefore it would be wrong and misleading to break it up into my thought, your thought, my feelings, these feelings, those feelings. I would say that thought makes what is often called in modern language a system.

A system means a set of connected things or parts. But the way people commonly use the word nowadays, it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent — not only for their mutual action, but for  their meaning and for their existence.

—David Bohm
Thought as a System (1992)

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