“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered;…” claimed Galileo Galilei, adding, “the point is to discover them.” Galileo, known for his advocacy of the Copernican view that the sun was at the center of the universe, was a seeker of truth. His heretical, although empirical, notions of the movements of planetary bodies through the heavens didn?t rest well with those with irrefutable knowledge of such things. Geocentrism was not just a matter of faith. Divinely transmitted through sacred scripture, it was truth.
In Part 1, I listed the five ways people come to truth: faith, approval, oral tradition, cognitive reasoning, and reflection. In the Canki Sutta, he Buddha describes these as means of preserving truth. They do not bring a person directly to truth because each of them has two possible outcomes. Regardless of belief, something is either true or it is not true. There are no guarantees.
Through diligent study, calculation and observation, Galileo proposed the planets orbited the sun. He was right. The church – as the vessel of truth – was wrong. But he also insisted the planets? orbits were circular, not elliptical. Despite study, cognitive reasoning and reflection, he was wrong about this. He was wrong about other things too.
So how does one discover truth? The Buddha?s advice was with regard to spiritual truths, but I think it applies to other areas of life as well, social and political, for example. To begin the quest for truth he said to examine the teacher. A teacher, of course, should know the subject. But the Buddha says to take a closer look. People are influenced by the forces of craving, aversion, and delusion. One would expect teachers to be, to some extent, exceptions to the rule.
With practice and experience we can often know when someone is operating out of craving or aversion. We can sense when there is an ulterior motive. When we can’t, we often get taken.
But delusion is much more difficult to discern. To one degree or another we all suffer from delusion. It is, after all, the cause of turmoil in the world. When in the midst of a cultural mindset it’s difficult, if not impossible, to see beyond delusion. Travel back 600 years and it?s likely you, too, would have shared the geocentric delusion as well as many other “truths” that have over time been revealed as untrue.
Discovering truth through close examination of the teacher, however, is not the final arrival at truth. Arriving at the truth takes much more work.
