Let’s gain some clarity about how we’re using the word 'truth'

[Joseph Maynor]

I want you folks to discuss truth and your story about it here.  Ok, so we have reality — which is the present moment, and we call that truth.

Now, we also have conceptual truth.  This would be like — Reality is uniform in some sense.  The story of reality has a structure to it.  That’s a belief about reality, not reality per se.  And you can determine that empirically through meditation and/or mindfulness.

So, how do we treat conceptual truth in a way where we don’t lose sight of reality?  That seems to be our biggest issue?  That’s where we are still all screwed up it seems.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Faceless]

Thought/Reality is a function of the substance of the whole/truth. When reality is taken as all important or the underlying substance of ‘what is’ then that’s where distortions occur. If reality is taken for truth then all movements of distortion lead to further distortion. Hints contradiction, confusion, illusion, deception, conflict, and so on... Don’t be concerned with truth because you can’t ‘Know’ nothing about truth. Just be concerned with reality/thought. The seeing that thought distorts reality is truth. One who sees and understands this lives is or is truth. They see that they are blind when it comes to truth. Seeing this is truth. 

I wouldn’t go any farther in explaining than that because from there space of mind would most likely vary for person to person. But in this seeing opens up the door to meditation/headlessness. 

Edited February 22, 2018 by Faceless

[dorg]

9 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

So, how do we treat conceptual truth in a way where we don’t lose sight of reality?  That seems to be our biggest issue?

We don't go too far into concepts. What is too far? When we really start thinking/believing we are actually defined by them.

 

[StephenK]

As you said, most fundamentally we have this present moment, that is, the truth of awareness itself manifesting now. Awareness tends to manifest in different forms (what we would generally call experiences). These discrete experiences have a natural way of unfolding within awareness, one turning into another. I think it is good practice to ask: "What are the qualitative aspects of experience that can bee seen prior to inferring a 'model' of reality?' We can observe that each slide in this show of experiences is impermanent. Because of the insight into impermanence, we see that no impermanent phenomena/experience can truly be taken to be 'self'. More than that, because of impermanence, we know that no single experience will be able to fully satisfy us indefinitely, and thus clinging to said experiences will cause distress upon their dissolution. As soon as we propose models of reality, like some kind of framework that makes everything 'tick', we have a system that will ultimately eat its own head upon further inquiry. My two cents.

[tsuki]

@Joseph Maynor

I think that is it a very important observation that everybody seems to know what is true, but nobody seems to agree on what is truth.
To ask what is truth is to ask "What is true about truth?" and then to try and find a single answer, which would be true, of course!

This self-referential question "what is truth?" is the very essence of the mind that got here in the first place. It constructs reality by transcending it - by finding meaning where is none. It creates meaning out of thin air by making observable, direct phenomena something that they are not. It makes the monitor a forum, a keyboard mouth and a "moving image of the mind" a memory.

This meaning-making machine is not lying, per se. What the mind has constructed may become false only by the very mechanism of transcendence, of changing meaning. Whatever you see and "understand" is true and very moment that it changes meaning you declare your past experience as "false". 

In short: "Truth is whatever stops you from seeking". Is that sentence true? Does it stop you from seeking? You can always ask more questions, do you?

 

Edited February 23, 2018 by tsuki

[Hsinav]

On 2018-02-22 at 8:22 PM, Joseph Maynor said:

So, how do we treat conceptual truth in a way where we don’t lose sight of reality?

There is no such thing as conceptual truth, ultimately. You can only know truth from within and that experience (knowing) can never be shared by concepts.

Concepts can at it´s best help people to reveal there true nature which is synonymous with truth. Like helping them peeling of layers and layers upon an onion, after the last layer is peeled of though, whats left can not be named nor mediate with words.

Because - the concepts themselves are the layers of the onion.