Heaps and Hurricanes

This chapter assesses the prominent Buddhist view of collections. To talk about the wants, plans, and traits of a company or a government is really to talk about the members that make it up and their relationships. Although these collections can seem to be separately existing things in the world, they are just handy names for what makes them up. This is not to deny that these labels can be useful, at least for some purposes. Sometimes talking about things that do not really exist can be helpful and even teach people things. These labels are just the name people give to a bunch of parts that interact in ways that are relevant to them. Indeed, using handy names for certain collections is not necessarily bad. However, when one starts to think of those names as picking out something real in the world, one starts running into trouble.