The Two Truths

Marvelous words. Said simply, there is no God, no soul. These are two untruths. Please keep discussing 'two truths'.

 

No God, no soul? Damn I've been confused ...

 

How do I get my money back?

 

I am afraid you would need to write off.

 

You mean in the Sankhya Tattva-kaumudi?

I'm looking at their causation reasoning, as well.

 

I have zeroed on what we know today. The essence. Samkhya accepts duality. That is not my way. Keep looking and let us know what you get.

 

I'm bumping my PMS thread to revisit it.

 

I kind of accept neither here.

I don't think that the world we see is necessarily "true." We're apt to a lot of illusions and our memories are faulty. Each of us also has a very idiosyncratic perspective on the world, not just due to our genetics and our environment but also due to the limitations of the human body itself. Our brains have to interpret certain wavelengths of light that have been categorized into three separate types of cones by our eyes, for instance.

I also don't think that there is some greater spiritual or metaphysical reality.

To me, truth is a function of either classical logic or fuzzy logic, and they require mathematical or statistical proofs to back up. Even under fuzzy logic, much of what's regarded as "true" is really just "truth-likeness" or verisimilitude. Rather than saying that inductive conclusions are true, as we do in deductive logic, we say that they are justified (or have high truth values)

I don't even think that facts are true, necessarily. To me, a "fact" is just an empirical observation. As mentioned above, our observations are biased, limited, and frequently outright false, so calling facts true seems wrong to me.

I am aware that these are heavily formalized definitions of these terms and that, in casual conversation, the terms are used a lot more loosely. The casual use of these terms predate their formalization. However, the formalization is meant to make these terms more precise and useful, which I think is important for clear communication.

 

I find these number sets interesting. As you are most likely aware I hear voices or thoughts about thoughts. Thoughts about thoughts is just the ability to translate any thought into words, so anything living that can express a thought.

11 = something that can figure something out.
10 = something that can figure nothing out.
01 = nothing that can figure something out.
00 = nothing that can figure nothing out.

In meditation I can see and interact with both nothing or something.

Anyway, two truths do you mean like my personal truth compared to your personal truth?

powessy

 

Following up on posts regarding "two truths" and dualism, I would like to share my thoughts.

Again, I apologize for posting in verse; those of you who have read my posts know that I prefer to share my thoughts as distilled over a number of decades and encapsulated in my blog/book, which is written in verse. I do believe that the structure of verse lends itself to clearer understanding although it does require a bit more "mouse-work" in scrolling down.

My thoughts about dualism are woven into the entire body of my work, so here I will try and cut-and-paste some relevant bits into a format that, while relatively short, might give you the gist of my thought regarding Truth (Spirit) and dualism (Self):

How it might have started, with dualism:


All pairs of this and that are
Fruit of the tree of which
The first man ate - the tree
Of knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong,
Of yes and no, and up and down,
Of left and right, and of in and out.

Without this knowledge,
Original man made no distinctions,
Original man existed undifferentiated.

Gaining knowledge of Self, he
Created not-Self,
He created "other;" and

In his embarrassment sought
To hide himself from the one whom
He had considered his own flesh.

In his relationship to Spirit, as well, man found himSelf apart:

Wishing to grow closer to me,
One asked of me a name.
And in naming me I AM,
Distinguished me, and,
In distinguishing me,
Pushed me away.

Alienated from the hearts of man,
I became an “other.”
...

Present in every heart,
Spirit is as much man’s birthright as flesh.

Neither by ceremony instilled,
Nor gifted from without,
I am an ember buried deep within man’s heart,
My light and my heat hidden beneath
A fleshy body and a lifetime of experience –
The dispositions that create men’s Selves.

Buried deep within man’s heart, my heat
Can be brought to flame
By the breezes of life’s experience or
By the breath of a guiding spirit.

Of renunciants, who renounce Self in search of Spirit:

Renunciants are closest to me because,
In the childlike purity of their hearts,
They make no distinctions –
No in, no out; no up, no down.
No left and no right.
No good and no evil,
No me, and no you.

In their Self-lessness, renunciants
Return to undifferentiated spirit only –
That which existed before
They became themSelves, needful,
In their isolation, of warmth, and
Of comfort, and of protection.

In their Self-lessness, renunciants
Return to a peace that
Cannot rightly be called “union,” for
There is no “other” with whom to be united;
They return to a peace that
Cannot be called "emptiness," for
Here they find love, they find Charity,
They find the peace of simple Being.

Untroubled by the past,
Unworried for the future,
Untouched and unmoved,
Renunciants merely ARE,
As I AM.

Of spirit only,
My renunciants walk
Their paths,
Living lives of peace,
Living lives of Charity.

My distilled understanding of the "two truths" is that while ultimate truth can be experientially "known," it cannot be spoken of. To speak of something is to give it a name, and to name is to differentiate ... and ultimate truth is undifferentiated. To share with others what we experience of ultimate truth, we speak ... and as soon as we open our mouths, we create a "provisional" (impermanent) truth. This "provisional truth" sustains our day-to-day existence, but is of little use to our lives as spiritual beings (there in the ultimate truth).

Again, sorry for burdening everyone with so much mouse-work.

 

The Truth may be hard or as good as impossible to put into words, but what can be expressed perfectly well are "how to" instructions: practices, roadmaps, reports of adventurers before us.

Removing the empty lines within a stanza would motivate me to read them. Right now, I frankly don't want to.

 

Here you are, I reformatted the post to be a bit more readable:

 

Thanks, to both of you, @Ella S. and @Geoffrey.

I like the verses. The Dhammapada seems to be in the ancestry mix there

Is renunciation an expression of "ultimate truth" or a conducive means to attain insight into it, what's your opinion, @Geoffrey?

 

Thank you, Ella, for reformatting my posts; it really does make them more readable. I copied the text from my Word file and pasted into the forum text box and was also not pleased with the results. Just couldn't figure out how to reformat after doing the pasting. I will work on my computer skills. Thanks again, Ella, for your help!

 

No problem, the poems are a useful addition to this thread. I'm not sure how computer literate you are, but I can explain what I did.

When you paste, instead of doing Ctrl+V you can do Ctrl+Shift+V (or you can right-click and select "Paste as plain text" from the menu) which allows you to paste the text without formatting. Then you can use the forum's built-in text tools in the ribbon above the text box to change some of the formatting.

All I did was highlight all of the text and click the Italics button (second from the left on the ribbon) twice to get rid of the Italics, then I clicked in the spaces between each line and hit backspace to get rid of them.

For the quotes, I used a forum tag. I opened two tabs simultaneously. In the first one, I hit "reply" to Cino. In the second one, I hit "reply" to your post.

In the second tab where I was replying to your post, I deleted everything between the QUOTE and /QUOTE brackets that wasn't a part of your poetry. Then, I copied the entire QUOTE bracket, along with its information.

The brackets contain the text:

The first part in the bracket, QUOTE, tells the website that everything after this bracket should be put inside of a quotation box. You can leave it as [ QUOTE ] (without the spaces) but when we hit reply, the website automatically fills in some extra data for us. The " marks after the = tells the computer that everything within those quotation marks will give information about the quotation box.

As you might have ascertained, the first information given is the title of the quotation box, which defaults to the name of the person you are replying to. After that is the unique post ID which refers to this specific thread and your specific reply within it. After that is your unique member ID, which is the name that the website uses for you in its own internal processes. Since a quotation box can be named anything, this member ID is how the website knows that the reply is mentioning a specific user on the website rather than someone else named Geoffrey, and this allows it to notify you that I replied to you in this thread.

Knowing this, I placed an additional [ /QUOTE ] after your first poem, which tells the website that this is the end of the content that goes in the quotation box. It is very important that every [ QUOTE ] is followed by one and only one [ /QUOTE ] or else you will break the formatting of your post, because the site will be confused about what to put in the quotation box. This means that I copied and pasted the whole bracket two more times at the beginning of the other two poem's titles, making sure that every poem also ended with a [ /QUOTE ] at the end of its last line.

Here is a plain text example of what that looks like for one of the poems, with spaces added to the brackets so they don't confuse the website:

After I did this in the second tab, I highlighted my entire reply and hit Ctrl+X before closing the tab. Then I went back to the first tab with my reply to Cino still partially written and hit Ctrl+V in the text box to paste the poems after what I had already written. Then I posted my reply to Cino.

 

The format reminds me quite a bit of boolean algebra.

 

So where does mārā fit into this?

 

The way I imagine this is like an x,y graph or the beginning set for a binary string or number. In binary 1 or 0 can indicate a positive or negative value. If both sets are used then you can then store information into four locations rather then just two.

The reason I suggest binary is because of a memory, I remember an image from before this life time where they used colors like a palate of 35 colors with white and black used as the beginning integer.

boolean would work when trying to decide which area you are in like “xor”.

just my thoughts

powessy

 

If you hear echoes of Dhammapada in my writing it's because, during my journey, I have "sat at the feet of" many masters. Keep reading and you will undoubtedly hear more "echoes" of many "sounds."

Renunciation of Self, it seems to me, is the only path to arriving at Truth, for (to quote once again from my book/blog; and thanks again to Ella for her excellent instructions!):

Self

Arising from the body,
Self is but a mirage,
Devoid of true being.

Arising from the heart,
Self is but a phantom,
Empty of true being.

Arising from the mind,
Self is but a dream,
Without true being.

Arising from the flesh,
Self is but a mirage, a phantom, a dream, and
Possesses no true being.


And ... (for the purposes of this question, "the one before you" in this poem can be read to refer to Spirit, or Truth.


No True Being

Of the flesh –
Of the body, of the heart, of the mind, and
Of the Self arising therefrom,
The one before you,
Differentiated, named, made by you an “other” –
Is false,
Is empty,
Is a mirage.

The one before you
Has no true being.

Of the spirit,
The one before you,
Undifferentiated, unnamed, simple, is
At one with all things and
No “thing” at all.

Of the spirit,
The one before you
Is Truth,
Is Charity,
Is Love.

 

Mara, like Satan, is the personification of the "flesh" side of human existence. Like Satan, Mara has been "demonized" because the flesh inhibits growth to spirit.

To quote yet again from my book/blog (again, sorry for the amount of scrolling this passage might require):

Tipping the Balance

Man's birthright is to both flesh and to spirit, and
He spends his life there
On the balance between flesh and spirit,
On the balance between sin and righteousness,
On the balance between suffering and happiness.

From the day of his birth,
Man grows to the needs of the flesh -
To body, to heart, to mind, and
To the Self arising therefrom.

Now grown to flesh, grown to Self,
Man's needs become desires -
Desires of the body, of the heart, of the mind, and
Of the Self arising therefrom.

Amidst his desires, man fully human
Hears spirit's whisperings and
Longs for a happiness
Beyond the flesh -
He longs for spirit, for union, and

In his longing for spirit,
In his desire to tip the balance,
Man learns that he must abandon the flesh -
Abandon the body, the heart, the mind, and
The Self arising therefrom.

Reflecting on Self, man discovers that
Behaviors that served him in his youth
Have become habits, and that
These habits impede his growth to spirit.

Reflecting yet further, man discovers that the
Preferences and opinions that
Defined him in his youth have
Become prejudices, and that
These prejudices impede his growth to spirit.

Reflecting more deeply, man discovers that
If he is to be free from
The appetites of the body, the passions of the heart,
The desires of the mind -
His attachments to the flesh and
To the Self arising therefrom -
He must acknowledge the truth that,

Arising from the body,
Self is but a mirage,
Void of true being; that

Arising from the heart,
Self is but a phantom,
Empty of true being; that

Arising from the mind,
Self is but a dream,
Without true being, and that

His appetites are but a mirage,
His anger but a phantom,
His hatred but a dream.

Man, awakened to the truth,
Rescinds the liberty he gave
Him-Self in his youth, and is
Gradually set free.

Without Self, where can
Hunger, anger, hatred find a home?
From what fount might
Lust, envy, and pride come forth to expression?

Rescinding the liberty he
Afforded him-Self in his youth, man
Tips the balance to spirit and,
Spirit quickened,
Man's suffering diminishes as
Meekness blossoms in the inner man and
Charity and Love - union both with spirit and among men -
Find their natural, joyful expression.

Spirit is reached not with
The putting on of an additional layer, with
The donning of cloak or armor, but by
Letting fall the many layers of
Life's experience - the dispositions - which both
Form and buttress the Self.

Self is not an enemy to be
Conquered by force, but
An adversary vanquished only by
Denying his strength, for

Self's power over man is,
Arising from body, but a mirage;
Arising from heart, but a phantom;
Arising from the mind, but a dream.