  Ordinary mentation is bound up with expectations, judgments, and  desires. The Buddhist philosophical term used for describing the  state of ordinary mentation is prapañca (lit.  ‘fabrication,’ usually translated as ‘conceptual  proliferation’)[see Samyutta Nikāya, IV, 72]. We  don't simply apprehend an object. Rather, we apprehend it as the  locus of a multiplicity of associations: in seeing a tree we perceive an entity made of trunk, branches, and foliage but also something  that can provide shade and lumber. In perception we are ordinarily  assailed by a stream of conceptualizing tendencies, which have their  ultimate source in linguistic conventions and categorizing practices. These conceptualizing tendencies overwhelm and distort the perceptual experience.