We should maintain that if an interpretation of any word in any religion leads to disharmony and does not positively further the welfare of the many, then such an interpretation is to be regarded as wrong; that is, against the will of God, or as the working of Satan or Mara.

Buddhadasa Bikkhu, a Thai Buddhist Monk


Thursday, August 2, 2012

One World: Real & True

There is a real world.  It is physical, sensible, and real.  It is billions of years in the making, evolves, and has depths and heights deeper and higher than the unaided eye can see or the unaided mind can grasp.  Our knowledge of the real world also evolves.

There is a true world.  It is meta-physical, sensible, and true.  It has been Present for the billions of years of the real world, and it may also be evolving.  We don't know.  It has depths and heights deeper and higher than the undisciplined heart can perceive.  Our knowledge of the true world grows over time.

The real world and the true world are separately one world together, but there are those who choose to live only in one or the other.  For them, the previous sentence is nonsense, because it speaks of two worlds being one world but still  refers to this single entity as being two.  Yet, some of those who want to live in one of the two single worlds are very comfortable with the tiniest bits of reality being either and both energy and/or particles.  At the edges of their real world, language begins to get tangled up with apparent contradictions.  And for others, they are convinced that one man was/is both a single human person and God the beyondest of all Beyonds.  And, again, at the edges of their true world language gets tangled up in apparent contradictions.  It really shouldn't be that hard to see the real world and the true world, two worlds real & true, as one world, true & real.

The real world is the world of Science.  The true world is the world of Faith.  One day, we will see them for what they are, human ways of grappling with the truly real universe and its really true source of becoming, which is its Creator.  Amen.