ABSTRACT
Buddhist thought thoroughly critiques our attempts to attain permanence, independence, and self-subsistence by identifying with transient, conditioned phenomena, whether material, psychological, or conceptual. We impute intrinsic meaning and value onto these phenomena, the Buddhists assert, and imagine that their possession somehow augments our essential worth or well-being. This entails that we bifurcate our world of experience into two discrete dimensions, the objective and subjective. That is, we experience the world in terms of “objective” things – which are inevitably mediated through linguistic, cultural, and social conventions – and we imagine that they possess intrinsic power to impart happiness, health, and well-being. These “things” possess, in other words, a symbolic value2 above and beyond their mere physical existence. Enthralled by these enduring yet abstract objects, we create, as it were, a life-world of seemingly
solid, yet unavoidably mediated “things.” Man,3 the symbol-making creature, constructs a world of his own in which to make his home.
