When a person or a group of people identify themselves with "the good" (in opposition to "not so good" or even "the evil" of others), quite often this can lead to "the good" getting overly aggressive in its pursuit of the goodness and de-facto turning into evil. Is this an inevitable problem arising due to identification/reification or is there a way to keep it under control and identify with the good without becoming the evil? If so, how can that be achieved? What guidelines do various Buddhist schools offer on this topic, if any? P.S. by "to identify with" I mean "to consider themselves to be affiliated with, or to be representative of, the true *something* (in this case *the good*)"

Sometimes some visual or auditory sense perception gives the taste of no-self. Like, the ego dissolves for a moment and you feel tremendous oneness with existence. For e.g. while looking at the sunset or the night sky, or listening to the rain. But such states don't last for long. So just want to understand what might be happening. I think what happens is that you perceive but there is no reification, but that is what I think. Is it possible to have perception without reification? And is this state the same as "***Yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana***"

Further to my last question on reification , I want to know the specificity of the application. Gathering from the answers ; > ...reifications are overcome by questioning them. and > Start by watching yourself in the middle of daily situations, watching > your behavior and your mind, your state of mind, your emotions. See > how you react, how you get angry or irritated or scared etc. See what > situations and most importantly what thoughts trigger these reactions > these states in you. This paragraph talks about much higher-level mental formulations and emotions which I have overcome. I am much interested or dealing with reifications suggested in Honey cake sutta which this answer points to, Buddha says; > Mendicant, a person is beset by concepts of identity that emerge from > the proliferation of perceptions. If they don’t find anything worth > approving, welcoming, or getting attached to in the source from which > these arise, just this is the end of the underlying tendencies to > desire, repulsion, views, doubt, conceit, the desire to be reborn, and > ignorance. Further Venerable Mahākaccāna explains this as; > Eye consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights. The meeting > of the three is contact. Contact is a condition for feeling. What you > feel, you perceive. What you perceive, you think about. What you think > about, you proliferate. What you proliferate about is the source from > which a person is beset by concepts of identity that emerge from the > proliferation of perceptions. ***This occurs with respect to sights known > by the eye in the past, future, and present***. Based on Mahākaccāna's explain, I want to ask, for an e.g. I see a Banana kept on a table, my eye-consciousness arises based on my eye and sight of banana, and contact is made and based on that a feeling arises. What I feel I perceive and what I perceive I think about. **In this sequence at what point do I have a choice to arrest the reification or perception? The moment I see the banana on the table may be within a fraction of seconds I perceive and get in the idea that its a palatable fruit, how can I question this idea that its a fruit and from my past memory I know I like its taste and I would like to eat it. This progress of events happen almost instantaneously. How much time do I have to question the model of my brain, which was trained way way back when I might have eaten the banana for the first time. How can I look at the banana as if I am looking at it for the first time and not recall from the model from my brain or form a new model?**

Reification is a way of conceptualization or objectification or mental modeling through which we form ideas, beliefs, and make an understanding of our surroundings. However, I saw a youtube video which explains that we have to overcome reification and/or social conditioning for spiritual enlightenment. But, the video does not explain the 'how'. So, my question is, how can we change/work-on **our perception** of the surrounding/ environment/society/beliefs, etc so that we see things as they are, like '***yathabhutam***'?