Insight or Truth?
I was wondering for sometime as to why we don't see the Indian traditions as giving us the truth, but settle to propose it simply as a provider of insight. Insights are of many kinds and reading fiction provides us with a few! So why practice or look into the Indian traditions?
Truth on the other hand, is unavoidable and fundamental to our very existence, and also universal. So insight or truth? Perhaps a way to solve this is to say: Indian traditions do give us the truth, but the truth they give is the "ultimate truth", the "ultimate reality". Indian traditions do not differentiate qualitatively between other levels of reality. So we could say that although few people living at the social levels of reality acknowledge ultimate truths of the kind that the Indian traditions give us, the Indian traditions on the other hand acknowledge all levels of reality and are impartial towards these.
So 'the constraint of human nature', as someone once put it, is such that sooner or later, everybody is led to the truth that the Indian traditions give us. My thoughts on this are half-baked, of course. Because I don't know how this 'constraint of human nature' manifests in the West, for example. Via existential angst, perhaps? But exactly how? Literature seems to capture this angst in Western cultures substituting the more substantial and direct, spiritual inquiry of the Eastern cultures...
Truth on the other hand, is unavoidable and fundamental to our very existence, and also universal. So insight or truth? Perhaps a way to solve this is to say: Indian traditions do give us the truth, but the truth they give is the "ultimate truth", the "ultimate reality". Indian traditions do not differentiate qualitatively between other levels of reality. So we could say that although few people living at the social levels of reality acknowledge ultimate truths of the kind that the Indian traditions give us, the Indian traditions on the other hand acknowledge all levels of reality and are impartial towards these.
So 'the constraint of human nature', as someone once put it, is such that sooner or later, everybody is led to the truth that the Indian traditions give us. My thoughts on this are half-baked, of course. Because I don't know how this 'constraint of human nature' manifests in the West, for example. Via existential angst, perhaps? But exactly how? Literature seems to capture this angst in Western cultures substituting the more substantial and direct, spiritual inquiry of the Eastern cultures...
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