THE TRUTH IS ALREADY TRUE — PART ONE

Currently we are witnessing a presidential impeachment trial, only the third in the history of the United States. Ostensibly a process of getting at the truth of the matter, it is also a process of obfuscating the truth, deflecting or distracting the attention of the jurors and judges from the truth, depending on whether you are the prosecution or the defense. As such, the presentation is a stark example of the old adage that if you have three people in the room, there will be an attacker, a defender, and a moderator, and the three roles will rotate through the three present. In other words, with two people you can have a true collaboration, but with three you inevitably have politics.

The question of truth becomes one of objective versus subjective truth. And the evidence, via testimony, the paper trail of documents, and other hard evidence — such as the bloody long knives that brought down Julius Caesar — can likewise be the subject of endless dispute as to their veracity, or relevance. Trial lawyers can be forgiven for dissembling, raising smoke screens, and even lying in defense of their clients, as long as everyone agrees that the purpose of a trial has nothing to do with the truth. The adage that it is impossible to convince someone of the truth, if their paycheck depends on their not believing it, holds firm.   

TRUTH IN ZEN

Zen Buddhism does not ignore the lamentable degree to which humankind can ignore, distort, or twist the truth to nefarious ends, but it points away from the disputatious truth of opinion to another kind of truth: the absolute reality, as opposed to our relative perception of it and conceptions about it.

In Zen, we regard the examination of truth to begin within the personal sphere, expanding to the social, natural, and ultimately universal spheres, as touched on in prior Dharma Bytes. Or you might prefer the model of physical versus emotional, mental, and social dimensions. Our meditation, zazen, promotes the development of balance, or Samadhi, in all of these dimensions precisely because it is an exploratory process of discovery, not one of imposing a preconceived truth.

On a relativistic level, we may speak of physical, personal truth, which may differ in kind and expression from emotional and social truths, especially as we mature, and if we happen to visit or move to a foreign country, where cultural memes and societal truths are out of synch with those native to our origins. Mental truths, that are informed by percepts and defined by concepts, may not align with natural, or universal truths. Relative truths, which are primarily a matter of agreement — such as the meaning of language itself — may have little to do with the absolute truths from which they are derived. A “tree” does not know that it is a tree, let alone an “arbre” (French), or “ki” (Japanese).

MORE ON ZEN’S NESTING SPHERES — INTERNAL

Continuing our exploration of the four spheres model by taking the opposite approach, starting at the boundary of the innermost sphere of the personal level, and looking inward from that vantage point. We find that social, natural and universal spheres are also reflected in the internal dimensions of the personal, if on a different scale. This illustration reveals the immensely complex and interrelated processes that are going on while we sit. Looking at them as zones or spheres of activities we can roughly relate biological functions to centers of the anatomy arrayed as eight points of focus for breathing in the martial arts, and even more loosely to the eight dimensions of the Eightfold Path.  

An historical aside on the meaning of a sphere may be helpful. The analogy of “sphere,” or “dhatu” (meaning “realm” in Sanskrit) was traditionally used to describe the tripartite nature of the Six Senses of classical Buddhism: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. In each is found 1: an organ; 2: its object; and 3: its field of interaction, the level of the electromagnetic spectrum on which the transaction takes place. From the organ of the eye — with its object being form, color, contrasts, etc. and its field being light; to the mind — with its organ the brain, thoughts being its objects, and the field being the nervous system of the body; each of the six senses reflects this threefold model, with the sum total of eighteen realms comprising a comprehensive model of sentient existence.

When we turn inward from the boundary interfacing outer social and inner personal spheres (acknowledging Hakuin Zenji’s declaration that there is no actual separation of “inner” and “outer”), we find resonances with the social, natural and universal dimensions. Beginning with the interface of the senses in zazen, we recognize that sense-data is not simply coming from outside, but is also emanating from inside our being. This two-way dynamic is poetically captured in the central stanza from “Precious Mirror Samadhi (Hokyo Zammai)” by Tozan Ryokai, credited with being the founder of Soto Zen in China:

Though it is not constructed

It is not beyond words

Like facing a precious mirror

Form and reflection behold each other

You are not it but in truth it is you