Hello Marsha --
Ultimate Truth is not a form or entity. Ultimate Truth is the lack of
inherent existence, independence, autonomy, permanence and
changelessness. To the Buddhist, it is Emptiness or dependent
arising. To the MoQ'ist it is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable
Quality.
Since "ultimate" is commonly understood to mean the final or quintessential
nature of reality, I find it strange that one would conceive of the Ultimate
as a "lack" or "emptiness". I interpret the Buddhist concept of emptiness
to connote "non-thingness" rather than a void or empty space. Meister
Eckhart, who was a Christian gnostic, referred to the Creator as "absolute
fullness of being," and it is in the sense of that concept that I've posited
an Absolute Source.
You see, Marsha, I view the physical universe (i.e., "beingness") as mostly
nothingness. In physicists' terms, the critical density of interstellar
space has been calculated at about one hydrogen atom per cubic meter, or one
ten-thousandth of an ounce in a volume the size of Earth. I'd call that
essentially pure emptiness, wouldn't you?. So if, as I firmly believe,
there is a source for "what IS", that source must be absolute "IS-ness", or
what I call Essence. (Incidentally, although the nature of Essence is
unknowable, unlike Quality it is not dependent on a conscious agent.)
[Ham, previously]:
Since you deny a primary source or Creator, I can only assume
that you believe the universe created itself and that you are a late
product of its evolution.
[Marsha]:
If by evolution you mean 'change', I understand myself to be the flow
of ever-changing, interdependent, impermanent organic, biological,
social, and intellectual patterns.
Such a collection of ephemera does indeed suggest "emptiness"; yet there is
no cause or progenitor implied. Nothing comes from nothingness. SOMETHING
starts this process of change, dependence, differentiation, evolution, and
patterning that we experience as the universe. What is that something? To
say it is Quality infers that quality stands alone, independent of relations
or differences, which it does not. Quality can only be judged in relation
to something which lacks quality. Like the descriptor "Excellent", it needs
a comparative referent by which to be measured.
If one thinks that the 'incomplete knowledge' or 'illogical reasoning'
is the Truth and never question such assumptions, than that seems a
pretty good definition of ignorance. It's not a pretty word, but I fully
admit, pretty or not, that I am working with my own ignorance.
(Be quiet, xacto!)
Truth is a chimera of objectivism. Its meaning is either "what works
consistently" or "what cannot be denied." Since it has no conceptual
value, I don't concern myself with it. If ideas were bound by what can be
proved as true, we would have no philosophy or intellectual thought. I
doubt very much that you're a person who rejects anything that can't be
objectively proved, or who believes cosmological theories are developed by
"ignorant" people.
Maybe you "accept [a cognizant self]", but to others you have posited it,
asked them to
assume its absence.
What would I want to demean my own Self by asking others to assume its
absence?
You might investigate whether there is within what you think to be
the self or what you think to be external objects is changelessness,
independence, and permanence? You've already stated elsewhere
that all is relative, that the ultimate truth that can be known is that
all
is relative, and what is beyond the known is unknowable and undefinable.
Yes?
The mode of experience is relative, temporal and changing. Therefore I do
not rely on the experienced world for metaphysical insight. Factual,
definitive (i.e, objective) knowledge is not my game. (I give the
scientists credit for that.) As a philosopher, I am a conceptualist.
Pirsig himself denounced the logical positivists, and most of what is
discussed here is of a conceptual nature.
Quality is a label for what is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable.
That label, I suppose, would include future events, the cause of evil, fuzzy
math, the Big Bang, extra-terrestrial life, gods and goddesses, superstition
and witchcraft.
Thanks for your explanations, Marsha. I've enjoyed our dialogue.
Best wishes,
Ham
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