The problem with truth, so to speak, is that, apparently, it is 180 degrees out of phase with what we insist it is. There is what the truth is, and then there is what we do as a team to defend what we insist it is. Waking up includes making the shift from what we insist it is, back to what it is, so we can look at how we work as a team to defend what we insist it is. I call this process “The Recovery Process.” This is the work I do now: I assist individuals to reconnect with the truth so they can identify how they fill time pretending they can prove truth is false. Suffering is the clue it isn’t possible to prove truth is false. The evidence mounts that there is a huge connection between truth and our determination to prove truth is false. How much do we suffer by defending the fiction we can prove truth is false? How much do we use suffering as proof for the fiction truth is false?
It makes sense to dismiss Wei Wu Wei’s synthesis of the Buddhist view of reality because it is 180 degree out of phase with the view of reality the majority of us defend as “the truth.” He gets to be called ‘that crazy man,’ or that ‘iconoclastic heretic,’ or whatever epithet works to ignore the possibility that what he has to say has to do with the truth. The truth is, we don’t want to know what the truth is. The truth is we hate truth because it always obligates us to revise views we treat as sacred, like the sun rotates around the earth. When Copernicus said this wasn’t true, he almost lost his life for challenging the prevailing view of truth. As I write, the haploid collider at Cern intends to smash particles to look for the Higgs Boson, a particle given the nick name of “The God Particle” because, if found, it will result in a single equation that explains the ‘mechanics of the universe.’ We are on the threshold, perhaps, of finding the elusive, “Unified Field Theory” that has escaped description, so far.
Truth exists outside of current imagination because truth and imagination are part of a single process. Imagination expands the more truth reveals itself, and the more truth reveals itself, the faster imagination expands. Right now, imagination is waiting for the next shoe to fall. Historically, this is another moment of ‘breathlessness’; part fear, part hope, and part suspicion that we have a date with truth, no matter how much truth runs the rate at which it reveals itself to us. We are suspended in time, waiting to discover why we are only right about something for this moment in time. Surely most of what is ‘right’ today, will be exposed as false soon enough.
Before I read Wei Wu Wei, I was firmly entrenched in the standard, usual, Western view of reality. I was in synch with almost everyone I knew. Years passed before it became obvious that almost everyone in this reality is featured signing some invisible agreement to defend our rendition of reality at any cost, including enduring the suffering that goes with defending a fiction as if it is a fact.
Time can be viewed as the context in which we work as a team to defend the lie truth is false. In retrospect, what became obvious is that this is how we fill time: we will work as a team to dismiss truth as false so we can defend what we insist it is. Truth, as it turns out, can’t be dismissed, which means it always threatens our definition of truth. The sun does not rotate around the earth, and particles that manifest as ‘matter’ (objects), are far less ‘objective’ than we care to hear. The warning seems subtle, but it’s always palpable: if objects are not objects in fact, then what are we? Time displays everything we do to reify the object we defend as a ‘person.’ The implication lingers in the background that if we are not the objects we insist we are, then we have to be something else. Quantum Mechanics (QM) is hot on the trail of what an ‘object’ might be, if it isn’t an object as we define it. Truth, it seems, is on track to take us to the next level of what ‘reality’ is all about. The story of ‘reality’ is what mystery is all about!
Buddhism predates formal science as we know it, so it is often dismissed as too ‘mystical’ to be taken seriously. Buddhists are kind, quaint, and rarely a problem, unless you are a Chinese dictator who views them as a threat to your rendition of control. What they think, in general, is that the concept of control is a myth, which drives us on to defend the fiction we have it. If truth includes the fact control is a myth, then Buddhism exists as a warning sign that who we are in fact isn’t running anything. We defend the assumption that the collection of particles we refer to as ‘a person’ runs some part of reality. Parenthetically, if I review my case load for the last twenty years, it should come as no big surprise that problems ensue in response to the assumption control exists.
Almost everyone tries to prove they have control, one way or another, and there is no reliable evidence this is possible. If anything is amazing, it is the degree to which most of us refuse to entertain the possibility it doesn’t exist. Lemons (cars) continue to roll off the assembly line, deals fall through, marriages head south, and disappointment is legion. The question is, how can a non particle that acts like a solid entity run reality? Time finally discloses that this is only a charade, and that a few individuals are featured looking at this charade objectively as slapstick. Think about it! How many problems stem from defending the fiction control exists? Isn’t war itself a control issue? If you look into the interior of relationships, you will discover that the control issue is at the heart of the problem.
Wei Wu Wei’s synthesis of Buddhism blew the lid off the fiction control exists. We don’t have it, and working to pretend we have it only seems to work, sort of; but sooner or later we will get our comeuppance. Waking up includes recovering why it doesn’t exist, and why most of us invest so much time defending the fiction we have it. Once you reconnect with why it isn’t possible to have it, you get to watch the way we fill time in defense of the fiction we have it. Trying to achieve a non existent goal as if it exists is a ‘crazy maker.’ In defense of the myth of control, we get to do the same things over and over again, expecting different results (that what we do will prove we have control), which can’t materialize if the option to have control is zero. It’s because control doesn’t exist that we go to war with one another. A marriage will die if the couple fills time, exclusively, in defense of the fiction control exists, and one of them is going to be the victor. The option to win comes out of the realization that the horse we are beating has been dead from day one.
In the next installment, I will focus on how Wei Wu Wei’s synthesis of Buddhism reveals why the control issue is a lost cause. War is inevitable, at all levels, both macro and micro, until waking up reveals why the pursuit of control is, quite frankly, beyond retardation. Every day is another opportunity to confront the possibility we don’t have it because it doesn’t exist. We prefer to view this as a ‘personal defect’ or ‘short coming’ than face the fact we strive to portray we have it to ignore why it doesn’t exist. The seeing of this accurately, ultimately, alludes to the origin of comedy. A life becomes progressively weird the more we refuse to admit we know, at some pre-conscious level, that we are equal because no one has it. Love, for example, comes out of the realization of our fundamental equality. Cooperation makes sense after it’s clear control doesn’t exist. Once we realize it doesn’t exist, and why, we can work as a mutual support team. Everyone prospers. This signals the beginning of a healthy marriage.
