**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Wisdom #TheMind > **🌱 Planted:** Fri 30 May 2025 --- > [!quote] > The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it. Religious ideas are like words-of little use, and often misleading, unless you know the concrete realities to which they refer. The word "water" is a useful means of communication amongst those who know water. The same is true of the word and the idea called "God." > > — [[Alan Watts]] Thinking about experience is not having experience. Learning about experience is not having experience. Talking about experience is not having experience. Writing about experience is not having experience. Conceptualising experience is not having experience. Philosophising experience is not having experience. Only having experience, is having experience. We can swap the word 'experience' for truth, or even reality, and we can swap 'having experience' for 'experiencing truth' or 'experiencing reality'. When someone points to the moon so they can show you, you're meant to look at the moon itself and not the finger that points to it. This is what is meant by the Zen teaching "Don't mistake the finger for the moon". It warns us against confusing the pointer with what is being pointed to. In this metaphor, the pointer can be thought of anything the mind uses to conceptualise reality. Us humans seem to make this mistake often: - We confuse words for the actual things they refer to. - We expect our maps to accurately represent the territory in reality. - We take teachings, models, theories, frameworks and doctrines to be truth itself, rather than symbols that guide us toward it. - We treat religious or spiritual insight as ends in themselves rather than means to awaken experience. - We cling to theories about the nature of reality instead of simply encountering and experiencing the true nature of reality exactly as it is in the present moment. Perhaps it is inbuilt into the nature of the mind... to get our conceptualisations and symbols mixed up with the true nature of reality. After all, [[The mind can never know reality as it truly is]]. As best as we can though, we should try our best to remember to hold our concepts lightly. If we become so attached to the specific method, teaching, theory, or concept, we risk losing sight of the actual truth or transformation the symbol is meant to represent and facilitate. --- **🈁 See Also:** - [[The mind can never know reality as it truly is]].