What Is Truth?

Originally posted by Pawnokeyhole
Are your statements true, or just another perspective?

They are simply a perspective of my perspective.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
"Real" and "Truth" are words. Artificial labels we put on artificial things - mere constructs of our brains.

So the real age of the universe isn't the truth, but something that
is artificial no matter what we call it?
Kelly

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
What does 88 have to do with white supremacy?

White supremacists have been using 88 as a code for Heil Hitler. H being the 8th letter of the alphabet. Although, as Dottie pointed out, if he's 17 he was born in 1988. An unfortunate coincidence.

I couldn't make this up if I tried, really.

http://www.adl.org/hate_symbols/numbers_88.asp

Originally posted by KellyJay
So the real age of the universe isn't the truth, but something that
is artificial no matter what we call it?
Kelly

If the universe exists, then based on the evidence within it we can extrapolate the age of the universe. Is that "real"? Is it "true"? Who could possibly ever know? Both reality and truthfulness are concepts. Is it possible to have a perfect concept is the question we should really be asking. However, to ask this question all the time, especially about whether one wants coffee or not would not be a fruitful endeavour, so it makes sense to treat the universe as a real thing.

Originally posted by David C
White supremacists have been using 88 as a code for Heil Hitler. H being the 8th letter of the alphabet. Although, as Dottie pointed out, if he's 17 he was born in 1988. An unfortunate coincidence.

I couldn't make this up if I tried, really.

http://www.adl.org/hate_symbols/numbers_88.asp

Hmmm...knows sekrit white supremacy codes...has as an avatar an Englishman (Hitler thought the English were the perfect model for a proper Aryan nation with their domination of brown people all over the world)...

Watch your back, you sick racist.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
We are simple receptors, because we are not our sensory apparati and we are not our brains. I am fairly certain that people (by this I mean the "self" or "sense of self"; what I would call a soul if I used that term, though I don't) are created by our brains and would not exist without it but we are not our brains.

If I want to be nitpicky, I suppo ...[text shortened]... at they are true without technically claiming I know something I cannot know.

What I meant is something like this:

In everyday experience our visual sense apparatus receives sensory stimuli, which are processed along the appropriate neural pathways, to be “translated” in the visual cortex into a visual image: and what we “see” is really that image, whether or not it is accurately reflective of the actual physical world—that’s roughly how I understand it anyway. Similarly with our other senses. In that neurological, biochemical process, our body/brain participates in creating that phenomenal experience, behind which we cannot get because of the conditions of our physical existence.

That’s why I said we are not simple receptors.

Even our “sense of self” is conditioned by the nature of our consciousness—or consciousness-process—which is conditioned by our brain functions. The notion that I actually “have” a “self” that is not conditioned by my body/brain is an illusion. In a sense, to speak of my “self” is to speak of my perspective, or the sense of self that is a product of my reflective consciousness-process. So I take the word “self” to mean such a “sense of self.”

I think I see your point about using the word “true” in anything other than a sort of everyday sense of meaning an accurate (again, taking our a priori conditioned perceptions into account) or useful description. I think it is also dottewell’s point in the first pages of this thread—treating “the truth” as some sort of metaphysical entity is an error; as is, in my view, treating the “self” as some sort of metaphysical entity.

Originally posted by David C
White supremacists have been using 88 as a code for Heil Hitler.

The Flak 88 was the most successful German gun in WW2; the JU 88 was the most versatile German bomber. Maybe there's something in this numbers magic after all!

Originally posted by David C
White supremacists have been using 88 as a code for Heil Hitler. H being the 8th letter of the alphabet. Although, as Dottie pointed out, if he's 17 he was born in 1988. An unfortunate coincidence.

I couldn't make this up if I tried, really.

http://www.adl.org/hate_symbols/numbers_88.asp

I always thought white power used 18, A=1 , H=8. . . for Adolf Hitler.


You learn a new thing every day .

Originally posted by dottewell
I think there's no getting away from the fact that Wittgenstein's later work does do away with that idea; on the other hand, even though we feel like with the later Wittgenstein we are losing something absolutely crucial to human experience (the "private" "feelingy" bit), we're not really losing anything. We can still talk of poetry, and art, and of th action"; one could almost say, for him, that the utterance is pure expression.[/b]

I still think that language can be used as an indirect “pointer” toward the nonverbal experience—albeit perhaps an inefficient one. That is why the Zen masters often resort to shouts and shoves and slaps, etc.—“pure utterance,” maybe? But, while they also say that expressions of “it” (the suchness of experience) are not “it,” they nevertheless condescend to speak—using (often paradoxical) language to point away from linguistic concepts of that suchness toward the suchness itself.

In Soto Zen, there is less reliance on koans, in favor of just letting the thinking mind go quiet in order to return to the Level 0, “just-this” experience of that suchness. Koans are more an attempt to “drive” the thinking mind to that point of letting go, and are more prominent in Rinzai Zen. My belief that language can still be useful for this is based on my koan “practice.” It is well—but metaphorically—described in Chiyono’s poem that LJ posted in the “Spiritual Quotes” thread:

In this way and that I have tried to save
the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and
about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!

Originally posted by vistesd
It is well—but metaphorically—described in Chiyono’s that LJ posted in the “Spiritual Quotes” thread:

In this way and that I have tried to save
the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and
about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!

The old bucket is awfully Irish somehow.

Metaphor is what language is all about, a bridge too far!

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
The old bucket is awfully Irish somehow.

Metaphor is what language is all about, a bridge too far!

Don't they say, "There's a little bit of the Irish in all of us"? 🙂

Originally posted by vistesd
Don't they say, "There's a little bit of the Irish in all of us"? 🙂

Holds true in my case. Just enough to give the Teuton within something to smile about, and maybe dance! Then there's the theory that the Celtic Irish have more in common with the Hindus than meets the eye.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Holds true in my case. Just enough to give the Teuton within something to smile about, and maybe dance! Then there's the theory that the Celtic Irish have more in common with the Hindus than meets the eye.

A freind of mine said that he once quoted the Hindu saying tat tvam asi to a group of Irish (in Ireland) who didn't know any Sanskrit--but that they were able to translate because of a similarity with the Irish-Celtic...

Originally posted by vistesd
A freind of mine said that he once quoted the Hindu saying tat tvam asi to a group of Irish (in Ireland) who didn't know any Sanskrit--but that they were able to translate because of a similarity with the Irish-Celtic...

May I recommend a cd, The Seven Steps to Mercy, by this singer here:
http://www.rootsworld.com/rw/feature/o'lionaird.html

It has a raga sort of kick to it, although it is not obvious.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
May I recommend a cd, The Seven Steps to Mercy, by this singer here:
http://www.rootsworld.com/rw/feature/o'lionaird.html

It has a raga sort of kick to it, although it is not obvious.

Thanks; I'll check it out. Got to go, because thunderstorms are threatening my computer...