A-prehension

Entities that experience through the senses 

but have not yet realized Buddha-hood are

called sentient beings. These beings exist

in a state of apprehension, meaning their 

egos, (survival instinct in animals), get in the 

way of prehension, seeing things as they are,

in order that ego may survive and/or be 

augmented by the perceived phenomena.

The survival instinct, which develops naturally

into ego in humans, is a governor or limiting 

factor, whereby the ego struggles to fit 

experience into the dogma of it’s beliefs, and

learned assumptions. The ego fundamentally

suspects it doesn’t exist, from which 

apprehension springs, and also is the seed of

enlightenment, bodhicitta. From the desire to 

understand springs philosophy, dogmatic 

religion as well as scientific materialism, none

of which are helpful in knowing anything much.

Feeling separate, alienated from our lives is a

symptom generated by this apprehension that 

arises from the belief in a self. It is the seed of 

enlightenment because it is the inspiration of 

the beginning the Buddhist path, the path of the 

dissolution of the illusion of ego. 

Some people say: “What would I do without 

ego?” In Freudian terms, a healthy ego is the sign

of a healthy psyche. In reality, the illusion of self

is the only fundamental problem that human 

beings have. Without it, there is no time lag 

between prehension, intellect/intelligence, and

action. A dancer, a rap poet, and a professional 

basketball player don’t have to think before they 

act. In fact, they wouldn’t be able to perform 

those functions if they tried to think about them 

at the  same time. Actors cannot be in character 

and  refer back to themselves (“how am I doing?”) 

at the same time. Sometimes actors have the 

problem of not being able to get out of character.

Their character becomes their ego. A complex

recognized by Freud, called the “Jarry complex”,

was named after the actor who adopted his

character, Pere Ubu, and wandered the streets of

Paris as that character. George C, Scott had a 

nervous breakdown after playing Patton. Daniel 

Day Lewis had problems after “Gangs of New 

York.” 

Unenlightened humans have personalities, 

characters, that they have developed over the 

course of their upbringing. It doesn’t matter if 

that character thinks they are the greatest 

person in the world, or the most miserable 

wretch. Whether positive or negative, any 

flavor of self reference is just ego delusion.