Truth Ineffable
There are in buddhism two classes of truth, sammuti saccha and paramattha saccha.
Sammuti means a “Notion/Concept” [Muti/Mati] that is “Shared in Common” [Sama]. Saccha/sacca is “What is Accurate/Honest/Correct.” This is Agreed or Conventional Truth. The theory of evolution is a sammuti saccha to most of us. So is the Big Bang.
Paramattha saccha means the Obvious or Ultimate or Highest Saccha. “Highest” implying Above agreement, convention, consensus, conjecture, debate, argument, etc. When you stand in front of a tree, the tree’s existence for you at that very moment is Paramattha saccha. It is Obvious and Above sammuti. Even if you were silly and disagreed with the tree’s existence, it changes nothing about the tree’s suchness.
I break paramattha saccha into two sides. Or we can say that I break “Truth” down into two types. The first is Truth in Actuality. The second is Truth is Essentiality.
But first “Truth” as I define and understand it is: A) That which is beyond a lie; B) Humans lie; C) A lie is something inaccurate; D) What Man speaks may potentially be a lie; E) Therefore, what is Beyond the spoken word of Man is defined as “Truth.”
And so a Truth in Actuality is something causal that can be experienced or observed by oneself sans words and ideation. For examples the Sun and Moon are Actual Truths, or truths that have an Actuality/Reality to them. I don’t need to put the Sun and Moon into words or ideas, and I don’t need others to preach about them to me. I can apprehend them myself wordlessly and thoughtlessly.
The second kind of truth, which is Truth based on Essentiality is harder to explain because it leave the causal domain, and enters the domain of acausal knowing and empathy. Essentiality meaning the state and condition of being Essence. Essence which is empathed or “felt,” rather than known mentally and intellectually. We can call these “Essential Truths” for the sake of convenient, as long as we understand that the descriptor “essential” is only trying to convey a non-physical Essence or “Formless Stuff of Experience.”
For example my own mind and life are to me “Essential Truths.” You can’t see them and I can’t see them, but I “know” they are there from my own Experience of them. My mind and life are “there” and to me they are both just as Obvious and Above sammuti as the Sun and Moon. I can be goofy and philosophically debate the existence of my mind and life, but this doesn’t change the fact that I have mind and life. My mind and life are truths in their essentiality.
Phenomena are Truths in Essentiality. But only in their unmolested condition of Essence [wordless/thoughtless].
For example when I see Lightening, that lightening bolt at that very moment as I experience it directly without wording it or putting it into thoughts and ideas is Truth in Essentiality. But when I speak that experience into words, it is no longer true. Why? Because what I speak is only a worded or ideated approximation that is not the Essence or actual thing. My words and ideas can be inaccurate and misunderstood. My words and ideas I express my experiences into are open to debate and argumentation.
Or to use another example: the phenomenon of me floating down a river in a boat. The experience of my floating down stream [the phenomenon of such] as I experience myself is Truth in its state of Essence.
Now I can say in words and thought: “I float down a river in a boat.” But is that Statement true? Am I floating down the river, or riding a boat? How do we know it’s a downward motion and not upwards? Is it a river or stream?
So for me, the concept of “The Truth Is Out There” is a significant statement. I will never find Truth in a book, a bible, in anything written, or in the words and ideas of other people. If Truth exists it exists “out there” in the open.
But that Truth only remains True in Silence and Mindfulness. Truth is therefore Ultimately [Paramattha] Ineffable.
And so we can better understand the ancient rule in Ancient Egypt’s Mystery Schools where the Initiate is never to write or speak anything. Many initiatic orders and spiritual traditions around the world had this same basic idea or never writing down their Light and Wisdom.
Or such mystery schools adopt the use of symbols, symbolism, and allegory. Numbers to Pythagoras comes to mind. The symbols and allegories serve only as a means to remember and recall the ineffable truths. The initiate must be gradually led to experience such Truths wordlessly directly himself or herself. Gnosis is that grasping and realization of that Mystery which must always be never written or spoken. An initiate who has experience Gnosis/Buddhi of the ineffable Mysteries is as Silent as the Cosmos which houses that Mystery.
Maybe this was why Buddha never committed anything he Buddhied into writings, opting instead to guide each disciple directly [vibhajjavada] to the source of that wordless and thoughtless experience of Dhamma.
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
122 yf
