All Spiritual Objects Are “Placebos” = they please
‘placebo’: from the Latin placere, to please

The value of an object is the value we put on it:
beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

This could come as a shock to some – it was for me!

The placebo effect: a beneficial effect produced by a placebo treatment which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment.

Religious or spiritual objects have no intrinsic (inward) value; they only have the value we put on them. The psychological is of value because it reminds us of something that pleases us. It is all to do with how carefully we view everything, and it’s exactly the same with the world in which we live, and our emotions: they are a reflection and expression of our true nature.

Objects themselves do nothing. Like a clanger in a bell, they create noisy appearances and emotions in the mind. Remove the clanger and there is no sound. The unity of the two truths is to include the clanger, which reminds us of the quality of the bell.

A Traditional Tibetan story:

A Tibetan mother, who was a devout Buddhist, had a son who travelled to India regularly on business. She repeatedly asked him to bring her something back from the place where the Buddha himself had lived, to help her in her spiritual practice – but he repeatedly forgot!

On his final trip, he suddenly remembered his mother’s request, and looked around for something he could give her. He saw a dead dog, rotting by the side of the road and pulled out a tooth from the carcass, washing it in a nearby puddle.

On his return, he presented the tooth to his mother, telling her that it was a tooth from the body of the Buddha. She placed it on her shrine, filled with deep and sincere reverence; it is said she achieved great accomplishment.

We cannot project a feeling onto something if it’s not there naturally (this could be a cultural phenomenon), but there will be always something that we truly appreciate because it is meaningful to us; it could, for example, be the written/spoken word – or space itself.