“When we speak about the Dhamma, it’s all a matter of strategy for understanding what’s right there. It’s matter of suppositions, a strategy. The genuine Dhamma exists, but it’s something you can’t see. We have to bring in other things so that we contemplate it.
It’s like a teacher teaching her students, “Suppose Mr. A has this much money.” Mr. A isn’t there in the room, so what do you do? You write down the letter A with a piece of chalk, and you suppose that it’s Mr. A. Is it Mr. A? It is as a supposition, but this Mr. A can’t run. You can take the letter A and suppose that it’s Mr. A and that he has this or that much money. It’s Mr. A on the level of supposition, but you can’t get this Mr. A to run anywhere, for it’s just the letter A. It’s a letter A that we can use. It’s a strategy. You have to understand that the actual Mr. A isn’t there, so you have to write the letter A to serve your purpose.”