Dear Piya,

> This is interesting discussion.

I hope this is one of the purposes of this group.

> At the risk of being labelled as "Mind Only"
> proponent

Why worry about that ? If you understand so-called Mind-only correctly
(actually another misleading term) correctly, assuming that you actually
mean Yogacara, then you have accessed the most sophisticated and convincing
account of perception and conception in Buddhism (imho). Yogacara is not
some form of idealism as popular writing and sloppy scholarship would have
us believe -- it is actually a form of phenomenology.

> (actually I just a poor old student)

As the old English saying goes "there's no shame in being poor: it just
damned inconvenient". As for being old, well it happens to all of us.

> one might ask if not all "sense-objects" are "mental products" ?

As I suggest in an earlier msg, the realist theory of perception is
untenable -- both in Buddhist terms and also in terms of modern neurology.
I think it is obvious that the perception of all sense objects is mediated
by one's senses and neurological processes In that sense, we do not have
direct access to any sense objects only menatl images of them. Whether
sense objects actually exist outside of our neurological systems is
unknowable, at least to us unenlightened beings. The Yogacarins and
Pramanikas posited a special kind of yogic perception which gives direct
access to sense objects and which is not mediated by the normal mental
processes. Buddhas are thought to have a similar ability.

> Is there a point during our conscious or perceptual process where we can

stop and say,

> that's it, this is the point where the mind shall not colour it?

Not sure, but I think if you can still say "that's it", then you are still
dealing with a mental event. The initial moment of phassa / spar'sa might
be that point or at least the closest one can get to the bare sense object
but even that bare cognition is a mental event.

> Could this at the level of samjna, before samskaras set in.

Definitely not, in my view. Sa.mj~naa / sa~n~naa as a process is what
generates nimitta, which I have argued are synthetic perceptual images.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge