Consider the example of a table. The table’s existence is possible due to the existence of things which we might call “the non-table world”: the forest where the wood grew and was cut, the carpenter, the iron ore which became the nails and screws, and countless other things which have relation to the table, the parents and ancestors of the carpenter, the sun and rain which made it possible for the trees to grow.
If you grasp the table’s reality then you see that in the table itself are present all those things which we normally think of as the non-table world. If you took away any of those non-table elements and returned them to their sources — the nails back to the iron ore, the wood to the forest, the carpenter to his parents — the table would no longer exist.
A person who looks at the table and can see the universe is a person who can see the way. —The Miracle of Mindfulness
