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Another question guys; can 'truth' be different for different people? Or is ultimate truth all same?
zenmyste
Veteran
If truth is truth then the ultimate truth is the same for everyone , no matter who you are or what you practice??
So another question always arises to me; if buddhism (or any practice for that matter) is stating 'theirs' is the ultimate Truth, then why isnt everyone practising it and benifiting from it..
Why are they not forcing it in schools?????
If buddhism is the WAY to peace and serenity and TRUTH then why isnt it commin sense for everyone to practice it?
Why is it so hard to grasp and pick up?
So another question always arises to me; if buddhism (or any practice for that matter) is stating 'theirs' is the ultimate Truth, then why isnt everyone practising it and benifiting from it..
Why are they not forcing it in schools?????
If buddhism is the WAY to peace and serenity and TRUTH then why isnt it commin sense for everyone to practice it?
Why is it so hard to grasp and pick up?
0
Comments
Assuming for a moment that a newborn might walk at all, and perhaps speak, the intellect groans under the words as passed down through history: Either this guy was the most self-centered twerp since Donald Trump, or the words meant something quite different.
The intellect, of course, would like its "ultimate reality" or "truth" or "pure light" or whatever served up in cookie-cutter perfection ... something that would fit neatly in a Christmas box and would be enforcibly credible in all times and all places ... everybody would be good little robots swimming in a haze of holiness and would be pictured with halos on Hallmark calendars. It is hard to escape the notion/hope that the truth is one thing and that's that ... no more fussing and fidgeting and getting pissed off or depressed.
Well, there are plenty of temples built on this model and history shows dozens of bloody wars fought using this kind of "truth" as a touchstone. Right, wrong; holy, unholy; truth, falsehood -- the intellect may be in seventh heaven, but the heart is not at peace.
The truth, whatever it is, is up to you and it's up to me. Buddhism suggests meditation as a good way to realize and actualize the truth ... as distinct from making it up and stuffing it between our ears or between the covers of a book.
What is the truth? Is it something that is "the same?" Is it something that is "different?" Either of those descriptions would limit the truth, don't you think? The truth cannot be limited (the intellect says as it limits the truth), on the other hand to say it is "unlimited" is likewise limiting. Is the truth worth running after? Is it worth hiding from? Can it be limited by virtue or lack of virtue? ............. Hell, the questions go on and on.
I think meditation is a good exercise. In every moment, a baby breath is born, takes a few steps, proclaims ascendancy and is gone. There's not much point in looking back on it when a new baby has already arrived and deserves attention and care. Looking after all these babies would be like herding cats ... dumb at a minimum because what is gone is gone.
Actualize, realize and don't be a chicken.
Let the intellect do what it has to, but don't get tricked.
Is this in any way true? I haven't got a clue.
The ultimate truth is just the idea that we should be somewhere else.
When discussing truth in this thread, are we talking about "the" universal truth? Or just "any ol' truth" in general? Because, of course, there is a difference.
When I say red I might think of a fire engine. Another time I would think of a tomato. I ask you and you might think of a red wagon. Thus the web of experience we have is unique to an individual and even to an individual is transient in time. Reality to a child of illusion (those who see through the solidity of the world) is vivid yet shifty.
The ultimate truth is that we all have open, clear, and sensitive minds. These three qualities are ungraspable thus you cannot know the truth in any other way than being the truth.
When you say "we can all know truth" .. Truth about what??
Do you mean truth about why we suffer? Truth about why we are here? Truth about what happens after we die? Etc etc ??
Are all religions talking about different truths? Seems like they are;
Christianity says their truth is GOD - that gods son jesus will one day come down and save us all etc etc we are all gods children...
Buddhism is all about mental suffering - why we suffer and how we stop suffering etc etc...
Taoisms truth is finding 'harmony in everything' (but again that comes under mental suffering!
So when someone gets into 'spirituality' and goes searching for 'meaning and truth' , are they refering to 'mental' meaning and truth? Or just any truth?
Sorry i just dont understand..
In sutras like the samdhi-nirmochana sutra it is taught that the "ultimate" is individually realized. So yes, although there is one mountain top, you have to start where you are. My map might be helpful in letting you know what landmarks are along the way, but we could be on totally different sides of the same mountain. Or even many mountains, really. The view is the same. I've heard "takes a buddha to know a buddha" -- buddhas ultimately realize the same Mind
Have a loving day, with whatever you do with it
You say if eveything changes then there is no ultimate anything...
But it depends on what 'ultimate' your refering to because there 'is' an ultimate truth about the world (even tho we will never know it)
Its a fact that the world began somehow but we will never know how it even got here or how far space goes etc etc... So ultimate truth' does exist , but like i said, am i refering to something about different?
The ultimate truth that we're referring to isn't an idea or a complete explanation of the universe. It can only be experienced directly and is ungraspable, as soon as you try to pick it up you've lost it.
Grace
From what I have read and been exposed to, there are many ways to realize "ultimate truth" and you can say that there are as many ways as there are beings in the six-fold cosmos, and thus, infinite ways!
In some traditions devotion to the guru is taught, in some traditions renunciation is taught, in some traditions, posture is taught. Yet, in all traditions, breathing meditation and inquiry into the true nature of reality are fundamental components.
So "ultimate" .. let me ask, what does this word mean in a non-spiritual context? Let's ask merriam webster.
2: arrived at as the last result , the last in a series
That's interesting. Perhaps we can ask some questions about things in the world. What is the ultimate nature of a cloud? What is the ultimate state of a tea cup?
If we study the Buddha's teachings, and take refuge in the Three Jewels, we can learn to see all things through to their Nature. Although the methods of inquiry are similar to what is known commonly as "science," Knowledge of the Ultimate is not a conceptual understanding. It's like trying to understand the taste of an almondbutter avocado sammich. You can draw pictures, take photos, ask people, think about how you might go about getting to a most delicious mouth watering almondbutter avocado sammich, but in the end to truly get a glimpse of the flavor you'll just have to sit down and bite into it for yourself.
Every thing changes.
There is however this 'no thing' which we have many names for but a universal experience of.
That 'experience', does not change. Is not 'had' . . . so there it is . . .
Hence the doubt, hence the confusion...
What @karasti seems to mean is only when you have arrived in Rome do you realise that all paths lead there.
As @Jeffrey says earlier. the only way to know an ultimate truth would be to become the truth. This is a matter of logic. Still, there are truths that are simple facts that are true at all times and all places and that may be calculated. I suppose these could be called ultimate or absolute. For example, that all positive metaphysical positions are absurd. This may not be an ultimate truth in the sense the OP means, since it is a calculation and we can never know that we have not made a mistake, but it at least points to an ultimate truth and the possibility of knowing it. I'm confident that Nagarjuna did not work this out but used his proof only to explain to others what he knew directly as an ultimate truth, or as a ramification of one.
Only if we know an ultimate truth can we know that there is a path to the cessation of suffering (assuming that there is). Without a knowledge of any ultimate truth we can never know this, since we cannot know it by reason or heresay. It is not a truth if we have faith in it, but it is if we know it empirically. So it seems to me that Buddhism is the claim that there are ultimate truths.
According to the Upanishads it is a knowable ultimate truth that all phenomena are void. So it seems to me that either there are ultimate truths or the Vedas are fiction, and the Buddhist sutras with them.
Religion is not postmodernism, or not Buddhism anyway. If we cannot know ultimate truths then it would be just another dogmatic faith-based religion instead of the science that it actually is.
'Knowing the ancient beginnings is the essence of Tao' says Lao Tsu. This seems to mean that the essence of Tao is knowing an ultimate truth.
But maybe we should carefully define 'ultimate truth' here, in case we have different ideas in mind.
At best, even "ultimate truth" is provisional, a necessary stepping stone to learning non-attachment. That's why it seems that the Heart Sutra negates the four noble truths. But the Heart Sutra dosn't contradict the four noble truths--rather it points to a nondualistic realisation of it.
And so it all comes back down to simply fetching water and carrying firewood. Where there is no metaphysical hierarchy, there is no "ultimate" or "relative" because they are both empty and interdependent. "Form is emptiness" of the Heart Sutra may seem to make sense on some level-- but "Emptiness is form" is the tricky part. This undermines the whole notion of a metaphysical hierarchy. Form and emptiness are not different.
But this is not a description of reality "as it really is" but one of many tools of the Buddhadharma to direct one to the other shore--but that "other shore" is the very ground we're standing on already. The problem is we can see that in attachment. Its all about letting go, because there is nothing to fear except insofar as we separate ourselves from everything else.
The problem with talking about nonduality is that it can't be talked about. Or, well, it can, but then you aren't actually talking about it, like a hand that tries to grab itself-- it can't be done. Likewise "truth" (if we can call it that) cannot grab itself, conceptualise itself. It can only realise itself.
In a story that could have been taken from the pages of classic Zen literature, the young Sheng-yen was on a brief sabbatical from the military, visiting local Ch'an teachers when, while up late one night meditating, he found himself sitting near an older man, also a guest of the monastery, who impressed Sheng-yen with his steady and peaceful demeanor. Asking the elderly monk if he would answer a question or two, Sheng-yen proceeded to pour out his heart for two hours, giving voice to all of the questions that no one had been able to help him with during his many years of spiritual practice. And at the end of each question, the monk, whom Sheng-yen would later find out was actually a revered Ch'an master, would simply ask, "Is that all?" Finally, Sheng-yen had exhausted his litany of questions and, in a moment of confusion, hesitated, not knowing what to do. Bang! The monk struck the platform they were sitting on and roared, "Take all of your questions and put them down! Who has all of these questions?" The effect on Sheng-yen was immediate and profound. "In that instant all of my questions were gone," he writes. "The whole world had changed. My body ran with perspiration but felt extraordinarily light. The person I had been was laughable. I felt like I had dropped a thousand-pound burden." The words of the Buddhist sutras [scriptures], which once seemed foreign and impenetrable, now came alive as Sheng-yen's own experience. "I understood them immediately, without explanation," he writes. "I felt as if they were my own words."
In a fluidic reality, it's a valid way of softening someone's grasp of another absolute but to actually try to define it is likely to just cause more grasping..
I hope this somewhat contributes to your search for an answer.
All the best
In thinking about this topic here and there over the past few days, I guess what I've arrived at for myself is, I don't care. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about such topics, but in the end, there is no real answer. You can arrive at an answer based on all the same things that cause us problems in other areas of our life, or you can think so much you start to go a bit nutty. It doesn't matter to me whether there is an ultimate truth or not, and I don't spend much time worrying about it. If it's there, then one day I'll come to know it. If not, my life won't be much different on a day to day basis. I just try to live by the best principles and values I can on a daily basis and make better decisions each day. What results from that, doesn't really matter to me because I have too little time here to bother worry too much about what ifs. I don't believe in an ultimate truth. But I don't not-believe, either.
And of course one can make that into the absolute. Oh the absolute is ungraspablity.
And that may help some people but only in the realm of ideas.
True help comes from experiential practice. Practice is not just one big experience, but continually come back to whats happening. Seeing, smelling, thinking, tasting, feeling, hearing, being, etc. Just this simplicity. All the dharma, path, and fruit is contained right there.
Yet the mind goes I don't get it, Am I enlightened yet? So back to sitting, etc.
To Angulimala.
The ultimate law is not a thing. It is not an object that you can observe. It is your interiority, it is subjectivity.
Buddha would have agreed totally with the Danish thinker, Soren Kierkegaard. He says: Truth is subjectivity. That is the difference between fact and truth. A fact is an objective thing. Science goes on searching for more and more facts, and science will never arrive at truth -- it cannot by the very definition of the word. Truth is the interiority of the scientist, but he never looks at it. He goes on observing other things. He never becomes aware of his own being.
That is the last meaning of 'dhamma': your interiority, your subjectivity, your truth.
One thing very significant -- allow it to sink deep into your heart: truth is never a theory, a hypothesis; it is always an experience. Hence my truth cannot be your truth. My truth is inescapably my truth; it will remain my truth, it cannot be yours. We cannot share it. Truth is unsharable, untransferable, incommunicable, inexpressible.
I can explain to you how I have attained it, but I cannot say what it is. The "how" is explainable, but not the "why." The discipline can be shown, but not the goal. Each one has to come to it in his own way. Each one has to come to it in his own inner being. In absolute aloneness it is revealed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagwan_Shree_Rajneesh
. . . or . . . drivel of a nitrous oxide addled brain, doing its best to look and quack like a duck and offering Kentucky Fried 'Dharma' and a mass poisoning cult. Know them by their fruits.
Out for a duck.
Truth is not 'experienced'. Ego is experienced. His was considerable.
Here are some great tips more of which I will be adopting as further proof of my ineptitude (nothing worse than being a 'guru' for the side order of 'Bhag1 get one free')
http://www.energygrid.com/spirit/ap-falsegurutest.html
The 'light' is the same, the flaws of the gem may sparkle differently according to the clarity. You don't pick up light, it is always there. Sometimes we grasp the gem too tightly and wonder why nothing sparkles . . .
Most of our life and energy is given to avoiding or doing other stuff - for example I am trying to instigate the pictorial representation of a not yet created Quantum CPU in the Processing Computer Language, which sounds very impressive but is in some ways meaningless . . .
How wonderful that what we move towards, moves ever closer of its own 'volition' :clap:
Great question--very much enjoying reading the responses.
According to the commenterial tradition of Theravada, ultimate truth (paramattha-sacca) refers to a level of truth or understanding that's not relative or based on conventional appearances or designations (as opposed to sammuti-sacca or 'commonly accepted truth'), but a deeper level of understanding of the underlying reality of things as they are arising from insight into the conditioned, impermanent, and selfless nature of phenomena, particularly vis-a-vis the five aggregates, which brings to mind a passage from SN 22.94: But as I mentioned before, the way these truths are used in Buddhism — like medicine for a confused and unwell mind — they're of no use if they're forced upon us with a rigid orthodoxy. Same with things like psychoanalytic therapy techniques, self-help programs, etc.
Insight can't be forced; it must unfold naturally.
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/b_lotus.htm
Good company? Stay with the lotuses . . .
:wave: