In Ven. Thubten Chodron's 2005 interview with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the lama noted that we "...ordinary beings who haven't realized emptiness don't see things as similar to illusions", and we do not "realize that things are merely labeled by mind and exist by mere name". He argues that "when we meditate on emptiness, we drop an atom bomb on this of a truly existent I" and we realize that "what appears true... isn't true". By this, the lama is claiming that what we think is real—our thoughts and feelings about people and things—"exists by being merely labeled". He argues that meditators who attain knowledge of a state of emptiness are able to realize that their thoughts are merely illusions from labelling by the mind.