I would like to use an example as a thought experiment and run away with it to see if I can understand just a small part of what we are discussing about distorted saññā.
In my previous posts I used what I understood in abhidhamma to understand the new subject, since I had nothing else to fall on. But in this one I’m making up just a silly example, but I hope the answers to which will clarify something for me.
In several posts on the site we often cited how humans perceive “beauty of a woman” or “sweetness of sugar”. As an adult male, I’m going to use an example about a beautiful woman and “run away with it” (and I may get quite silly with it) as I said above. This is not to offend anyone or stereotype anything, just a thought experiment, and I hope everyone will see it as such. But if not then Sir Lal can just delete the post.
Without further ado, here we go.
The scene: Lang is at a bar and sees a beautiful, sexy woman wearing a very revealing low-cut red dress.
Here, I am describing what most in an American culture consider a sexy beautiful woman: blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin, oval face, beautiful eyes and nose, etc.
From here on I may refer to the woman in the sense of an “external input”, and in such a case I’ll refer to her as “the object”. (Again, no intention of offend).
First, the easy part about colors (we had a number of posts about mind-made colors): the “blond” hair, “blue” eyes, “fair” skin, “red” dress — all of this comes from Lang’s saññā (let’s say “from Lang” from here on), not from “the object”.
Next, body parts: blond “hair”, blue “eyes”, fair “skin” — these are still “from Lang”. His built-in saññā as a human (and perhaps his learning) make him identify those as “hair”, “eyes”, “skin”. At the suddhāṭṭhaka level there are no “hair”, “eyes”, “skin”. So “hair”, “eyes”, “skin” still come “from Lang”, not from “the object”.
Now, sorry to get a little more “adult”. Lang peeks at the woman’s chest from time to time, but just like above: “breasts” still come “from Lang”; suddhāṭṭhaka have no “breasts”.
Next (I know I’m pushing it), I wonder if the fact that “the object” is a woman is also “from Lang”. Do suddhāṭṭhaka have inherent male/female quality?
Next, the “sexy woman” is still “from Lang”. Let’s say that there’s another older gentleman (call him A) in the bar; he comes from a culture that regards a woman dressing that way as “vulgar”; and so “vulgar woman” is “from A”, and not from “the object”.
Let me just stop here and get to the point I want to ask. Is it correct to say this: Objects in “the world out there” are (in a sense) blank slates, and our saññā projects qualities on them: red, blue, beautiful, ugly, pleasant, unpleasant, etc.