A Commonplace Book

My relationship with you is not with you as you see yourself, but with you as I see you; a waxworks creation in my mind. As a result, two people can share the same house and literally live in different worlds.

Heisenberg taught physicists that in subatomic realms, the observer affects the observation. The way we ask an experimental question determines the kind of answer we will get. In the Buddha's universe this is true for all experience. If a hostile person learns to slow down his thinking enough to see how much of what provokes him is projected by his own mind, his world changes, and so does his behavior — which, in turn, changes the world for those around him. "Little by little," the Buddha says, "we make ourselves good, as a bucket fills with water drop by drop." Little by little, too, we change the world we live in. Even the grand earth-shaking events of history have their origins in individual thought.