What do signs signify ? “Things of course” — the less sophisticated would readily answer. As far as common sense goes, signs presumably stand for the ’things’ we perceive with their aid. And the ‘things’ are those forms we see, the sounds we hear, the scents we smell, the flavours we taste, the objects we touch and the ideas we cognize. The more sophisticated would, however, prefer to be more precise. They would take up the position that behind those changing attributes that we perceive with our imperfect senseapparatus, there lies an unchanging substance, an essence, a noumenon.
Though analysis fails to reveal any such real essence, a ‘Ding-an-sich’ under the ever-receding layers of qualities and attributes,1 they would still maintain that, after all, there could not possibly be an attribute without a substance — a quality without a ‘thing’ that it ’qualifies’. According to the Ka‘laka‘ra‘ma Sutta, a Tathagata does not conceive of a visible thing as apart from sight or an audible thing as apart from hearing or a thing to be sensed as apart from sensation or a cognizable thing as apart from cognition. Furthermore, as the Suttas often make it clear, all percepts as such are to be regarded as mere signs (safifia‘, nimiz‘z‘d).
Hence while the worldling says that he perceives ‘things’ with the help of signs, the Tathagata says that all we perceive are mere signs. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches and ideas are, all of them, signs which consciousness pursues. But still the question may be asked; “What do these signs signify ?” “Things, of course” — the Tathagata would reply. ‘Things’, however, are not those that the worldling has in mind when he seeks an answer to this question. Lust, hatred and delusion are the ‘things’ which, according to the teaching of the Tathagata are signified by all sense-percepts. “Lust, friend, is a something, hatred is a something, delusion is a something. “Lust, friends is something significative, hatred is something significative, delusion is something significative”- Extracted from Magic of the Mind – (Page 13-14) Bhikkhu K. Ñāṇananda
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