Like a lot of Zen things, this sounds like someone 'trying to sound deep'. But I'll try my best to interpret it charitably and maybe others can chime in with th

Like a lot of Zen things, this sounds like someone 'trying to sound deep'. But I'll try my best to interpret it charitably and maybe others can chime in with their interpretations. It's safe to say most people see mountains as mountains etc. When you start practicing Zen, you glimpse into the inseparability of things: there is really no defined boundary between the 'atoms of the mountain' and the 'atoms of the water'. (Also the atoms themselves are mostly empty space with a probability distribution of where the 'stuff' 'is'). Things like 'mountains' are really illusory abstractions that humans build on top of the underlying reality of the swirling wave patterns of the universe. 'Existence precedes essence', as the existentialists say. Still in this second phase, you notice things like when you have a conversation with another, the conversation is not really being generated by either brain, it is being generated by the system that includes both brains (and nerves, muscles, vocal cords, the air between them, eardrums, etc.) However, after enlightenment, you realize that the underlying physics is no more 'real' than the abstractions, as the abstractions are what really has an effect on the universe. As Zizek might say, the distortion itself is the real. When I see a mountain, the way that my brain interprets it as a mountain, in effect makes it a mountain, because the symbol itself manifests itself in my thoughts and actions.