The school of hard knocks

Is there a mind-independent outside world? An idealist at a certain web forum mocked me once by challenging me to name one single thing I know or experience which doesn´t go through, ahem, the mind.

How do we counter such a splendid argument? 

I think there is an efficient way (at least if you meet the subjective idealist or solipsist IRL): hit him and hit him hard. He will either try to get away (the most probable option, since he would be a soy boy), or he will actually try to hit you back! Even better, the response will be almost automatic. It´s almost as if they instinctively assume that there is a mind-independent outside world...

None of these philosophy students will sit down and quietly start to meditate, thereby dissolving the illusion of them being hit by a half-crazed realist. 

Now, it´s of course true that their reactions also depend on the mind. In *that* sense, nothing we will ever see or do can be fully "mind-independent". But we are not trying to disprove this. We are trying to find something which can prove (to the mind and through the mind) that a mind-independent world actually exist. Or if not "prove" it, at least strongly suggest it. 

Ironically, I was led to develop this most splendid method of persuasion after reading about a very bizarre Tibetan Buddhist practice known as Dzogchen. Part of Dzogchen (and its cousin Mahamudra) is something called "pointing-out instruction" whereby a guru "points out the nature of mind" to the student. This is often done in a heavy-handed manner, for instance by suddenly hitting the student! The goal of Tibetan Buddhism is apparently not to extinguish your mind á la nirvana, but rather to return it to a primordial state, when the mind was thinking without concepts. Pointing-out instructions are meant to demonstrate that the mind in its primordial state actually looks in exactly this manner. When the teacher hits the student, and the student hits back, the latter is acting "without concepts". He spontaneously acts without conceptual thinking. The act of hitting back is raw, unmediated, fresh. 

Now, it struck me that this is the closest we can ever get to a "proof" for the existence of a mind-independent outside world. When our minds are in their most primordial state, they also most strongly assume that what we see and experience is really real. This is ironic, since the Tibetan Buddhists are (by Western standards) also a kind of idealists, believing that the ultimate ground of existence is a universal super-mind, of which our fight-and-flight reflexes are just a tiny glimmer...

Then, hit them again!