Blinded By Our Perceptions

The Buddha tells us that to understand the true nature of any entity, whether that entity is a self, a dharma, or even a buddha, we must not be blinded by our own perception of it. It is not the myriad atoms of dust or the billion-world universe that prevents us from attaining enlightenment but our mistaken views of such things as separate or permanent, as somehow real. But on closer examination, these entities turn out to be rather arbitrary views of reality founded on nothing more than linguistic conventions, which are themselves the detritus of previously established arbitrary views. And all these views can be traced back to our view of the self.

---Red Pine, in his commentary on The Diamond Sutra---