What is Truth?
Latter Day Buddhism
Truth is the Here and Now.
Nothing Special.
Truth is about testing, and knowing the actual, immediate, direct experience of this moment.
-- See: Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyon Beliefs
by Steve Hagen, 2003 Printing, Ch 36, p 196, paragraphs 1 & 2.
Truth or Reality is not something vauge, mysterious, or hidden. You don't have to go to someone else to find it -- not to a teacher, or a buddha, or your parents, or a priest or rabbi or shaman, or any authority whatsoever. Nor is it something you can look up in a book. Truth comes to us through seeing. To see is to Know.
Seeing needs no further verification. It's immediate and as one with Truth. But we're usually not very skilled at seeing what is actually presented to us.
-- See: Buddhism Plain and Simple
by Steve Hagen, 1997 Printing, pg 27, paragraphs 2 & 3.
Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, "Now I've arrived!" Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.
-- See: The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, Vintage Books Edition, August 1989, Ch 3, page 80, paragraphs 2.
... become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give -- to the cause of peace or of racial integration, to starving Hindus and Chinese, or even to your closest friends. Without this, all social concern will be muddlesome meddling, and all work for the future will be planned disaster.
-- See: The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, Vintage Books Edition, August 1989, Ch 3, pages 115 & 116, paragraphs 2.
When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound. Yet what would we think of a society which had no place for music, which did not allow for dancing, or for any activity not directly involved with the practical problems of survival? Obviously, such a society would be surviving to no purpose -- unless it could somehow delight out of the "essential tasks" of farming, building, soldiering, manufacturing, or cooking. But in that moment the goal of survival is forgotten. The tasks are being done for their own sake, whereupon farms begin to look like gardens, sensible living-boxes sprout interesting roofs and mysterious ornaments, arms are engraved with curious patterns, carpenters take time to "finish" their work, and cooks become gourmets.
A Chinese philosophical work called "The Secret of the Golden Flower" says that "when purpose has been used to achieve puposelessness, the thing has been grasped."
-- See: The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, Vintage Books Edition, August 1989, Ch 5, page 125, paragraphs 1 and page 126, paragraphs 1.
To be released from the "You must survive" double-bind is to see that life is at root playing.
-- See: The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, Vintage Books Edition, August 1989, Ch 5, page 127, paragraphs 1.
Truth is not words. Truth is the reality that we experience at this very moment and we can learn to see clearly.
-- Brian William Drisko, 27-Nov-2007 1738
