BUDDHISM AND 'TRUTH' Kulananda Kulananda is Liaison Officer for the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. His address at the 1993 SoF Conference, reprinted in Sea of Faith 15, provoked the editor's question: "Does he think Buddhism corresponds to some notion of objective truth and reality, or does he recognise it as a human creation?" The question is framed on the basis of the post-Christian distinction between God as truly existent super-natural phenomenon and God as a product of human creation. Buddhism, however, has always taken this analysis one step further. Not only God but all human experience is a human creation. Our entire world is nothing but the objectification of our desires. So far as Buddhism is concerned, all phenomena whatsoever are equally transient and insubstantial and the entire universe, ourselves included, is nothing but an infinitely complex web of inter-dependent transient relationships.
This idea has been around for at least 2,500 years and, in the current era, something like it occurs from time to time in the arena of post-modern thought. But thinking like this is one thing, behaving as if this were true is quite another. No amount of merely cerebral de-construction can ever get to the ultimate root of the human predicament: we all have a deeply seated tendency to cling onto phenomena and to treat them as if they were truly enduring. In consequence we suffer.
Phenomena appear to us with an alluring seductiveness, holding out the vain hope of true being and lasting security, and the most seductive phenomena are ideologies. In organising the world - our ideas and impressions - in a particular way, ideologies give us a sense of the meaning of things and a sense of what our place in that structure of meaning is, and the vast majority of ideologies support the delusion that we have, in fact, a self.
There are two different kinds of ideology. By far the most common are those ideologies which entrap. Once you are committed to them, they manifest conceptual devices to keep you within them. A Marxist who starts to doubt the validity of historical materialism will be told by his comrades to purge himself of bourgeois tendencies. A fundamentalist Christian will be told that his doubts are from the devil and he must put them behind him and simply believe.
On the other hand there are ideologies which liberate.
Such ideologies are designed to transcend themselves and be self-negating: to free us, ultimately, from dependence on all ideologies including themselves. Buddhism, at its best, is a pre-eminent example of the latter. The Dharma, as Buddhist teaching, is something to be ultimately transcended and left behind.
This idea is vividly illustrated by the Parable of the Raft (Majjima-Nikaya 1.134), in which the Buddha describes the predicament of a man on a journey who encounters a large stretch of water blocking his way. The traveller proceeds to gather sticks and grass together and builds himself a temporary raft with which to cross over to the other side. When he has successfully done this, the Buddha asks, "...would that man think like this: 'This raft has been very useful to me. Resting on it and paddling with my hands and feet I have reached the further shore. I suppose I should now carry it about on my head, or lift it onto my shoulders and carry on with my journey'? What do you think, friends, would that man, in doing so, have finished with the raft?" "Surely not, Lord". "So how would that man have finished with the raft? In this way - the man who has crossed to the further shore would think like this: 'This raft has been very useful to me. Resting on it and paddling with my hands and feet I have reached the further shore. I will now haul it up on the shore or sink it in the water and go on my way'. In so doing, that man would have finished with the raft. "Even so, friends, using the simile of a raft I have shown you the Dhamma as something to leave behind, not to take with you.
Rafts are ultimately to be left behind. But this does not mean that we don't need a raft to cross the further shore. We cannot simply dispense with all ideologies at will. To do so (imagining such an impossibility for a moment) would be to propel us into a state of disorganised mental chaos and confusion. That is not the "further shore" which Buddhism speaks of.
Buddhism posits two different categories of truth:
Ultimate Truth and Conventional Truth.
Ultimate Truth is ultimately ineffable. Every predicate by which we seek to define it will ultimately contradict our attempted definition. The structure of language and conceptualisation is such that we can only affirm something in relation to an implied negation and negate something in relation to an implied affirmation. By whatever means we seek to describe a state which transcends the distinction between subject and object, being and non-being, affirmation and negation, we can, conceptually, only take our stand in one or another of the above polarities. The structure of language allows of no other position and thus Ultimate Truth is ultimately inexpressible.
Since it "goes beyond" dualistic understanding and expression, we may speak of Ultimate Truth as "transcendental". (In this context, please note, "transcendental" is not inter-changeable with "super-natural".) That the transcendental is inexpressible does not mean that it is unattainable, although it cannot be "attained" by a limited ego-identity, as if it were merely another attribute that the limited ego-identity could add onto itself. Rather, it involves the complete abandonment of ego-identity.
Thus, to further demonstrate the paradoxical nature of discussions of this nature, we can strive to gain Enlightenment, but we can never be Enlightened.
Enlightenment, Buddhahood, Nirvana are all expressions which point to the transcendental dimension: complete selflessness, absolute spiritual altruism. They are all, to use a popular Zen Buddhist expression, "fingers pointing to the Moon", and we must never mistake the finger for the moon. The expression does not exhaustively define the state expressed. So far as we are concerned, the transcendental is "over the horizon" and there is nothing we can definitively say of it. But this does not mean that there is no path leading towards the horizon, nor does it mean that we can't see a strong glow at the horizon or that we can't see significant signs and images which, although clearly on this side of the horizon, nonetheless indicate that there is something very important taking place beyond our current field of vision.
Ultimate Truth is over the horizon. This side of the horizon we have Conventional Truth. But that word "Conventional" doesn't signify a low level of value because Conventional Truth includes the whole range of doctrines and methods which point to the horizon - which conduce towards Enlightenment. Out of Conventional Truth we build the raft by which we reach the further shore; it is indispensable to anyone seeking the goal of Enlightenment. Thus, although "only" conventionally true, its value is beyond price.
We are currently spiritually deluded. We are not Enlightened. The Buddhist path begins with the recognition of this fact. We may be able to range towards the horizon with our intellect, with our imagination or with our emotions but essentially we live and act very much on this side of the horizon. We live as if the world were made up of ultimately discrete subjects and objects. Our actions are mainly governed by the motivations of appropriation and rejection. We constantly strive for recognition and affection. We act as if the things we possess, or wish we possessed, could give us lasting happiness and security. We are angry and disappointed when we don't get what we want, and we grieve when we lose what we thought we had. In short, we cling, however subtly, to views which stand in direct contradiction to the principles of the Dharma as expressed within Conventional Truth.
But, un-Enlightened, we cannot live without an ideology. It is therefore very important to become conscious of the ideologies we hold and to replace ideologies which keep us entrapped with ideologies which liberate. Ideologies, however unconsciously we hold them, determine our actions. As we believe, so we do: as we do, so we become.
One of the most concise and fundamental expressions of liberative ideology, of Conventional Truth, in the Buddhist tradition is the teaching of the Three Characteristics of all Phenomena. All phenomena are impermanent, unsatisfactory and insubstantial. Because phenomena are impermanent and insubstantial they cannot, of themselves, provide us with ultimate satisfaction. And yet, constantly treating phenomena as if they were permanent, substantial and ultimately satisfying, we are wedded to a nexus of suffering, endlessly cycling between the twin poles of attraction and repulsion: grabbing onto this, pushing away from that. And so it will go until we replace entrapping ideologies with liberative ideologies. Through the spiritual disciplines of ethical conduct, systematic meditation and deep reflection we can begin to re-orient ourselves. We can begin to transcend delusive self-centredness.
The illusion that we human beings need most of all is the illusion that our illusions are not illusions at all, but sacred and eternal verities.