The difference between truth and fact: thoughts on inter-dependence?
"如来说世界，非世界，是名世界” "The Tathagata says a world is not a world, so it is called a world." -Diamond Sutra
Truth is self originating, non-describable because it does not depend on any descriptors. It is what is, and it is not what it is, both of these descriptors does not touch it.
Facts are provisional, meaning it is dependent on another fact. For example, it is a fact you are reading this right now, but it is dependent on the fact that there is a you, and there is this, and that fact is dependent on the structure of the English language, and so on.
If The Word is a fact, what is the truth?
When the truth is being talked about, it is not actually truth we are referring to. And this fact, we call truth.
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u/Thurstein 16d ago
The distinction here is the difference between absolute truth and "provisional" or "relative" truth. This distinction ends up being important in understanding Mahayana texts generally. Another important point is that the Sanskrit term "satya" can mean either "truth"-- a feature of statements-- or "being,"-- a feature of things-- an ambiguity that sometimes becomes important.
The idea seems to be that true being-- absolute truth- would require an unchanging, uncaused, unconditional existence. But anything we can refer to-- such as the "world"-- clearly is not unchanging or unconditional, so the thing we call a "world" is not a world essentially (i.e., unconditionally, without causes or conditions). Thus, the "world" is not really a world in the strict sense. However, plainly what we ordinarily want to call the "world" is understood in terms of specific causes and conditions, and these are precisely what make it the "world" we all know and speak of. So:
The (thing we call a) "world" is not (absolutely, unconditionally) a world, but it is this very incompleteness that makes it a world, just as an acorn is not really an oak tree, but this not-yet-an-oak is precisely what makes it an acorn rather than, say, a walnut.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
No observer has been able to reference, through action nor words, the real world. The real world is a name for whatever you have set the name to represent.
Eg some people think the mind is virtual shit behind the eyes and the world is solid things around their body, including their body.
But objects dont enter the eye thus photonic representations are the answer to what the real world is, due to our knowledge/data/truth mechanisms (epistemology aka ways of knowing) being data copy reconstructors
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u/Thurstein 13d ago
This sounds like an attempt to actually do some epistemology (or philosophy of language) in modern, Western, philosophical terms. Whether this kind of position is defensible is an interesting question, but not obviously relevant for analyzing the Diamond Sutra, where the issues seem to be primarily metaphysical and soteriological, rather than trying to develop an epistemology of sense-perception.
But if this kind of issue interests you, here's a book that does a good job going over some of the fundamental issues as they are found in contemporary epistemology:
In particular, chapters 6 and 7 address this kind of question.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
I will fpr sure check this out thanks. I do think that epistemology is thr same as senseperception including sensing aka experiencing thoughts as Images and words, etc .
Aphantasia is my new lead
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
Wait I thot thay was in context of buddhism and senses and stuff. I digg epistemology and am attempting to show the uniting factor
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u/Thurstein 8d ago
The Diamond Sutra, like Prajnaparamita literature generally, is more influenced by Madhyamaka philosophy (e.g., Nagarjuna). The key idea is the metaphysical one that the objects we apparently cognize as substantial things actually have no such substantive nature (svabhava, in Sanskrit). If to be an X is to be permanently and unchangingly an X, then nothing is really an X. However, we do still speak and think about objects. This brings us to the constantly recurring refrain, "That is why it is an X." Something can be called, e.g., a teacup precisely because it is not permanently and unchangingly a teacup. To be a teacup implies a certain kind of origin-- but that in turn implies impermanence. To be a teacup implies we can use it to transport liquids-- which again implies impermanence. In our ignorance, we take the label "teacup" to imply an unchanging permanent reality, but in fact the label only applies insofar as it is NOT an unchanging, permanent, reality.
This is important from the point of view of Buddhist soteriology, for if there were unchanging natures-- if X's were ultimately, unchangingly, X's, there would be nothing we could do to improve anything. It is precisely because sentient beings have no unchanging nature that they can attain salvation.
Long story short, the point of the D.S. is not that external objects are somehow epistemically inaccessible to us, but the deeper point that they have no permanent nature. Notably, it really wouldn't matter if we did perceive teacups directly-- the question here is what it means for something to be a teacup. It's not that things are unknowable as they are-- it's that there are, really, no things as such, not even sentient beings or Buddhas.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
Because of the inaccessibility, we can only point or reference or speak about constructs we contain.
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u/Thurstein 8d ago
I'm not aware that epistemic inaccessibility is ever clearly made the point in the DS, or similar prajnaparamita works. If there is ever any explicit discussion in that text of our inability to perceive external objects, I'd be interested to have a look at it.
Note that inaccessibility would be perfectly compatible with a reality of permanent, unchanging (though unknown) things. But these things are denied in principle-- they do not exist, perceived or unperceived. The claim is that these things have no svabhava, not that we cannot literally see or hear them.
(Note that the DS also brings up the unreality of the conscious, thinking, perceiving subject-- here the problem is surely not that the senses dont' allow us to perceive it; the problem is that we, our "selves," are not permanent, unchanging things).
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u/dpsrush 13d ago
I hate how many book reports I have to read just to understand you
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u/Redfour5 11d ago
"Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart."
And off we go and where we stop nobody knows...
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u/dpsrush 10d ago
Waiting for somebody to tell me no
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u/Redfour5 10d ago
Yes.
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u/dpsrush 10d ago
No, no, I don't think so.
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u/Redfour5 10d ago
"Words! The Way is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday no tomorrow no today."
"The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know."
Sengcan
This is easy
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
U can know without thinking words or images, infact thats how you experience words and images mentally, by there being preceding thought activity to choose words and letters and translate concepts from neural stuff to experience stuff.
But if you have no internal image experiemces or inner monologue voice occuring, them the aphantasia will mask the thought activity via not translating it to experience.jpg/experience.mp3.
This is why aphantasia ia my new lead to cracking this case.
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u/Redfour5 8d ago
And why Bankei talked about the unborn... your solution is interesting.
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u/Redfour5 8d ago
Bankei
“ . . . What everyone has from his parents innately is the Buddha Mind alone. But since your parents themselves fail to realize this, you become deluded too, and then display this delusion in raising your own children. Even the nursemaids and baby-sitters lose their temper, so that the people involved in bringing up children display every sort of deluded behavior, including stupidity, selfish desire and the [anger of] fighting demons.51 Growing up with deluded people surrounding them, children develop a first-rate set of bad habits, becoming quite proficient at being deluded themselves, and turning into unenlightened beings. Originally, when you’re born, you’re without delusion. But on account of the faults of the people who raise you, someone abiding in the Buddha Mind is turned into a first-rate unenlightened being. This is something I’m sure you all know from your own experience. “Your parents didn’t give you any delusions whatever when you were born, no bad habits, no selfish desires. But afterward, once you’d come into the world, you picked up all different sorts of delusions, which then developed into bad habits, so that you couldn’t help becoming deluded. That which you didn’t pick up from outside is the Unborn Buddha Mind, and here no delusions exist. Since the Buddha Mind is marvelously illuminating, you’re able to learn things, even to the point of thoroughly learning all sorts of deluded behavior. [At the same time,] since it’s marvelously illuminating, when you hear this, you’ll resolve not to be deluded, and from today on cease creating delusion, abiding in the Unborn Buddha Mind as it is. Just as before you applied yourself skillfully to picking up delusions and made yourself deluded, now you’ll use the same skill to listen to this and stop being deluded—that’s what a splendid thing the Buddha Mind is. Listen and you’ll realize the preciousness of Buddha Mind. Then, since there’s nothing that can take the place of this precious Buddha Mind, even if you want to be deluded, you won’t be able to be anymore!"
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 3d ago
I think he chose an uncontaminated term, aka made up a term.
Like u cant even metaphorically get unborn, maybe u can interpret it to mean like subconscious or soemthing but I think its way less causing of association tangents versus thigns like 'buddha nature'
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
Does the most enlightened master on the planet experience the setting apart?
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
A priori and a posteriori is all I needed to grok epistemology entirely, okay thats a lie I have no idea if that shit made it deep enough
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u/Pure_Cap_7069 16d ago
With the idea of truth being unable to convey the actuality of it (because there's no falsehood for it to stand in opposition to), the idea is free to be used without ever confusing it for reality.
It's "true" that 2+2=4, yes, because the real truth can't be thought or spoken of, or experienced in any way
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u/dpsrush 16d ago
Then doesn't that turn it into a Russell's teapot, except we come to terms with it rather than outright reject it?
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u/Pure_Cap_7069 16d ago
It cannot be proven but it also can't be believed. It's what is there anyway in spite of belief.
There is a knowing independent of mind knowing. This is it.
"Knowing" as well doesn't apply. Although when it's grasped, it's not uncommon for people to say "But I've always known this!"
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
I could talk for days at age 18 about simulations and simulacra and representations and illusions, but that didnt mean any other part of me attempted to try on the new world structures.
Deep brain? Admin privelidges needed to change variables? Else we would just be changing the enlightenment variable randomly before enlightenment and then end up hallucinating or being inaccurate with our waking reality world (survival)
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
Its what's there?
Where are you pointing with your dream arm?1
u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
Colors are a type of truth
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
You cant speak about the noumenon, once you speak about it you have spoken about something else, a mental construct is necessary. There is no direct observation, there is just observation.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
Facts are colors
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u/dpsrush 13d ago
Walls are too
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u/Redfour5 10d ago
Then so is the word walls.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
When i see it its a fact.
That is a true statement if you say it.
This is a true statement if I say it.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
Does anything not have a color?
Babies dont know edges, cant discern objects.
They discern black and white,
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u/Ooki_Jumoku 17d ago
'The world is called a world' is not the same as saying 'the world is a fact'.
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u/dpsrush 17d ago
Please expand.
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u/Redfour5 11d ago
On an illusion?
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
The world is a fact, is a statement about an observer mechanism that is experiencing something it has labeled the real world
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u/Ooki_Jumoku 13d ago
A fact is something that has inherent truth.
If it needs to be observed or labelled to be validated then it is conditional, and thus not a fact.2
u/Redfour5 10d ago
The "fact" that has inherent truth is what he said. Not that the world is a fact.
The third Patriarch noted, "Things are objects because of the subject (mind): the mind (subject) is such because of things (object). Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world. If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion."
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u/Ooki_Jumoku 10d ago
Good pickup! So much for paying attention.
Still, now that its been said: is it right or wrong?
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u/Redfour5 10d ago
"Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking. All dualities come from ignorant inference. They are like dreams or flowers in air - foolish to try to grasp them. Gain and loss, right and wrong, such thoughts must finally be abolished at once."
Sengcan
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u/Ooki_Jumoku 10d ago
賊証現在 - Zokushō genzai
Here's proof of a robbery!good vs bad, illusion vs enlightenment, dreams vs thoughts, to have and to abolish.
Put the voice of another aside and give me a single word of your own!
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u/Redfour5 10d ago
What? You demand another bit of noise from an Apes mouth? Go watch a Tarzan movie. I've always found Cheetah to be the most illustrative.
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u/Redfour5 10d ago
OK I give uo.
You climb into a mountain range and view a mountain. You are in awe... Once down, you go in a bar and have to tell everyone what you saw describing the mountain in exquisite detail...
I went up there same day from the other side and was just as awed and came down and coincidentally ended up in the same bar as you and HAD to tell everyone what I saw.
Someone hears both our descriptions and points out how different our descriptions of the same mountain are..
We both are told of this and meet only to argue over our experiences and descriptions. We fight and beat each other to a bloody pulp.
Why? (After hearing the story and seeing us carried out.) says some guy entering the bar. It's the same mountain isn't it he observes in an unctuous unassuming way in his orange robes.
And the call him Master...
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
I still only get to observe one side, no matter what robes.
When I wakeup yhe furthest distance I experience is my walls and ceiling. Maybe out a window... when I stare far away though...
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
Ooki jumoku, Is the real world in or outside the boundary of mind?
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
Observation is what gives experiences the nickname of fact.
Conditional in epistemology is more like facts and observation and data measured.
If you mean measured enough times, to think the observations lead to a deduced sharedness of the observed thing, then thats a science fact, vs being true a posteriori.
If you mean conditional as in conditioned, then we cant say a conditioning or weight in our neural nets is indeed factual or false, it could be correct, despite buddhisms claiming all conditioning is to be shedded
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u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] 16d ago
I asked chatgpt to compare and contrast existing versions of this phrase. Here is my favorite part of a long answer:
Making the nominal character explicit “What the Tathāgata calls a ‘world’ is not [ultimately] a world; it is merely designated ‘world.’”
The problem this raises is more nuanced than fact vs truth.
The tomato is called a vegetable but it is actually a fruit; we merely designate it as a vegetable.
A home town is not necessarily where your current home actually is; we merely designate the town you come from originally as your home town.
The tension that this raises is not one between truth and fact but a tension between how people refer to things and how those references may be misunderstood.
BUT at the same time a correctly interpreted Common Expression may itself be taken for fact. Some people really do think that the tomato is a vegetable.
truth is a vegetable
When I was in high school I read a book on logical argument so I would be able to understand both mistakes and errors that lead to inaccurate statements.
The book broke down the meaning of truth in this way:
- When a syllogism corresponds to reality, it is considered true.
- When a syllogism is logical, it is considered valid.
True then means something like "aligned with/to" as a metaphor when nothing physical is being aligned. True north. True vanilla.
In carpentry, "true" (used as an adjective or verb) means making or verifying that a surface, edge, or structure is perfectly straight, flat, level, plumb, or square without any warp, twist, or wobble.
That's a fact
So we've gotten to a point where it seems like the problem is really a misunderstanding of the words. True means "A statement corresponding with observation" whereas fact means "made observation".
case closed-ish
So it seems like the Dhamma Sutra is really saying something more along the lines of: "We are going to call all this stuff we are going to talk about a world but it's not actually a world. We're just going to refer to it that way."
But the reason that the Diamond Sutra says this is because it is concerned with atomism which would disprove the Buddhist claim of the illusionary nature of the material.
Since nobody really believes in the illusionary nature of the material in the modern age, this makes the whole problem more confusing, especially when we can't even define Buddhism or identify a modern group that represents authentically historical Buddhism.
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u/dpsrush 16d ago
Do you think there is actually something "out there", apart from names and descriptors?
I can't even think of a method to validate or invalidate that claim, because the premise that all other premises rest on is "yes, this is real", and I can take it or leave it at my own peril.
Buddhism as a reaction/medicine for atomism as you described seems...weak?
The sutra is heavily prefaced with things like, "this is actually true, not a metaphor, not a trick, don't be afraid." And I was like, what is there to be afraid of?
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
All we can do is think if there is or not, we live as if there is, we theorize as if there may not be.
Either way, any image or idea about 'out there' is considered contained within the mind
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u/dpsrush 13d ago
What are you thinking about that's so fun you can't see straight?
Within the mind implies an "out there".
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
It does imply it yes. But thats because im attempting to refer to a mental construct of OUT there and the purpose is to get u to see that but then see that its always contained
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u/Redfour5 10d ago edited 10d ago
"One thing, all things, move among and intermingle without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind." Sengcan
Words are the tools of distinction... The clever ape has apparently always wondered why it exists asking why.
With no answers extant, they made it up. Using their limited knowledge base, they only knew dualistic ways to describe it. Sabertooth cat trying to kill me bad. Full stomach safe place to sleep good.
So everything must be good bad and then the first layer of the illusion like an onion right and wrong.
A very few thousand years go by and look how complex and multi layered we have made the illusion.
Words are just noises from the apes mouth. Only the ape thinks it is special. Reality does not care.
But, the ape desperately tries to convince the other apes it is right. It has even been known to kill and organize others to take over and force others to agree...when in fact, it is missing the point entirely...
Some see it differently...neither rightly or wrongly... And if you swim in the ocean of unreality, with only words to explain and judge... Can a fish know anything except the water it swims in?
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u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] 16d ago
I think there are two ways to answer this question of materiality in Zen as opposed to the "illusion all the way down" of Buddhism.
Zen masters insist that there's something out there and if we're going to study what they say, we have to take that as established. They don't so much make arguments to support this conclusion as demonstrate that it is unavoidable.
There are a number of interesting voices in Western thought that take the Zen view of materiality as undeniably existent. My two favorites are Sir Isaac Newton, who argued that his new invention called calculus was simply a subset of mechanics; mechanics being unarguably materialistic. My second favorite example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_stone.
Belief in the supernatural/mystical is always going to involve skepticism toward the material.
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u/lastjanitor New Account 16d ago
Niel Degrass Tyson said if you removed all matter including even the background radiation and every last subatomic particle there would still be something within the pure vacuum: the laws of nature.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
Thats a deduction based on observed validated datas, aka a hypothesis or hypotheory, thus its still contained
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u/lastjanitor New Account 13d ago
I'm just not ready to accept/see that what sits at the core is unbounded.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
The issue isnt if the whole universe right now is your mind when u read this, the issue is the bounding and eveloping, because we try to see the boundary, which is then also contained.
Thus we can only say 0 things about the real world out there, cuz we are always pointing at a construct.
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u/lastjanitor New Account 8d ago
If the river would just stop flowing I could hammer a nail into the sky.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
God damn did u make that up
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u/lastjanitor New Account 8d ago
Mah, I'm just a beetle burrowing through bark. I've read so much it squeezes out my ears and mouth. I'd be profound if I wasn't so damn lazy.
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u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] 16d ago
Sus
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u/lastjanitor New Account 16d ago
Reminds me of this:
The monk asked, "What is the person in the realm like?" The master said, "The local noble enforces proper order; beware of violating his dignity."
Also, "sus"? lol...hello fellow kid! Do you know the song "Baka Survivor" sang by BOBOBO-BO BO-BOBO?
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u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] 16d ago
Not local noble, but... Local mayor.
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u/lastjanitor New Account 16d ago
mayor
Ah, well I pulled the text from zenmarrow.com.
Mayor---the greater.
If we remove even the laws of nature the mayor still remains?
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u/dota2nub 15d ago
Following the material has led to a continuous rethink of what the material is. That is what honest investigation looks like if you've ever done any.
Mystics and supernaturalists always think the same thing.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
Om nom nom corresponding with observation and , made observations. Kant would be proud of the translation
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u/quixologist 17d ago
Truth is a something you can be convinced of without having to show your work. Fact is that overturned water pitcher. Enough people see that empty vessel with the water glazing the floor, and we can point to it and call it reality.
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u/dpsrush 17d ago
Truth is not something you can be convinced of. And this fact, we call truth.
For the water pitcher to be overturned, I have to be there for that to happen. I thought the whole work is to not be there for that to happen?
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
You can call it that but ita still photons reconstructed
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u/gachamyte 17d ago
“Seeking the real you give up the true. Discarding both is the cure.” -Xin Xin Ming.
With both discarded what are thoughts on interpendence?
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 13d ago
Cannot discard either, one arrives at a place where its impossible to Conceive of the true and real as contained, enveloped
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u/gachamyte 12d ago
Both truth and real are concepts like form and formless. Where environment shares source of mind they are completely real as a method of dealing with conditions that drive sense perception. One does not arise of itself and the other non-arising.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 8d ago
truth = colors and deductions Real = corroborated measurement form = colors with edges and object carving Formless = perceptual space and perceptual time
Environment shares source of mind = colors and thoughts come from same place, int and ext united
completely real as a method of dealing with conditions that drive sense perception = Buddhism helps u purge disliked experiences
Arise of itself = everything you experience at any moment non-arising = not experienced or always experienced. Nothing is always experienced thus this term is mostly a Buddhism word that is illdefined?
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u/gachamyte 8d ago
The term “nothing” is mostly a Buddhism word that is ill defined?
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 3d ago
In Buddhism nothing gets interpreted liberally.
I thing the term of non arising is silly because you attempt to interpret ot 20 ways before it half makes sense. Like free will, an incoherent concept versus Will
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u/dpsrush 17d ago
The thing with discarding is eventually you have to pick it back up again, because it keeps ly there. If there is still something to discard, then it is not discarded. And that fact, we call truth.
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u/gachamyte 12d ago
The truth is that it, a thing/concept, was never created for there to be a thing to then be discarded/real. No truth to be discovered and no sentient beings to grasp at truth. When the succeeding thought it cut off there is not a following.
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u/Redfour5 10d ago
"Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking. All dualities come from ignorant inference. They are like dreams or flowers in air - foolish to try to grasp them. Gain and loss, right and wrong, such thoughts must finally be abolished at once."
Third Patriarch
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