04 Dec Shadows of Truth

Shadows of Truth

“The carp has leaped through the dragon’s gate” – Chinese proverb.

In Chinese culture, the image of a carp ascending a waterfall and transforming into a dragon symbolizes the virtues of effort, perseverance, and accomplishment in a person’s life.

Chan Buddhists (Zen) have also adopted this idea as symbolizing the struggle towards enlightenment, the revelation of the true nature of reality. The outcome of their sainthood.

Many people seek the ‘true nature’ of reality in many ways. For the scientist, ‘true nature’ lies in the knowledge gained through experiment. Here, truth becomes revealed in logic and quantized within a mathematical framework.

But this approach has revealed something interesting, the idea of a ‘relative truth‘.

For instance, consider the atomic world. For the past 100 years, the scientific method has investigated the tiniest parts of matter. However, despite efforts towards definite outcomes, atomic science has shown there always remains a degree of uncertainty. As if woven in to the fabric of reality. Not to be deterred, scientific truth adapts to this by steering itself around ambiguity, using the cunning of mathematics.

And so, here is the challenge of ‘truth’ – what is it?

Much like the carp that ascends, and the monk that transcends, the ‘truth’ of reality is a leap. The leap for the scientist comes when they return home after work, having put away their cunning intellect, they no longer mistake reality for mathematics.

Whatever you put between yourself and the light, casts shadows of truth.

~CJ~