The next time youre looking at yourself in a double-sided mirror, you can notice that the reflection of your face, there in the double-sided mirror, is there only because of the confluence of: the existence of the double-sided mirror, your having placed your body in front of it, and the capacity of your eyes to see clearly what is in the mirrorto name just the most obvious of the causes & conditions.
Theres a specific training, within Buddhist yoga, which asks us to look upon the things of our world as being very similar to the reflections of objects as seen in a double-sided mirror: arising as the result of specific causes and conditions, yet possessing ~ in and of themselves ~ no inherent existence. And then you can think: all of the objects Im going to experience, as I walk through my day, are no more (or less) real than this reflection of my face that Im seeing now in the double-sided mirror. And notice the result, as you do go through your day, of thinking this way.
Then drop into an open, relaxed, shamata (calm abiding) sort of space, with your eyes open, gazing gently at the room-in-the-mirror-in-the-mirror. And then ~ a shift here to a more vipassana practice ~ understand: the world around you, as experienced by your conditioned perception, is always much like what youre seeing in the double-sided mirror.
If youve already got a sitting meditation practice, a variation on the above practice that you might like to try is this: sit facing AWAY from a large double-sided mirror (a full-length mirror is best, otherwise youll probably have to sit on a chair for this to work); then set up a second, smaller mirror in front of you, into which you can look, to see the room in front of you as reflected in the mirror thats behind you.
