We have to be very careful of misunderstanding here, for the Buddha is not saying that the physical world is a figment of imagination. That would imply a “real” world to compare with, and this is the real world. We are not “making it up,” but neither are we misperceiving a reality “out there” where things are solid and individuals are separate. What the Buddha is telling us is precisely parallel to what the quantum physicists say: when we examine the universe closely, it dissolves into discontinuity and a flux of fields of energy.
