Philosophical Context
Most philosophical and religious belief systems presume that reality must be independent of what an individual makes of it. However, even before the days of Plato, a prominent alternate theory of knowledge insisted that the perceived outside reality is merely an internal fabrication of the observer and that it has no existence or substance outside the imagination of the observer. The Buddha's statement: "All that we are arises from what we have thought" (Dhammapada 1.1) is reminiscent of this.
The Japanese swordsmaster Miyamoto Musashi, for example, in his The Book of Five Rings, noted that when he teaches people martial arts, "since generally makes them learn such things as have actual relevance to addressing, there is no such thing as a distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric."
Read more about this topic: Exoteric
Famous quotes containing the word context:
“Parents are led to believe that they must be consistent, that is, always respond to the same issue the same way. Consistency is good up to a point but your child also needs to understand context and subtlety . . . much of adult life is governed by context: what is appropriate in one setting is not appropriate in another; the way something is said may be more important than what is said. . . .”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)