The True World
Philosophers—those teachers of life wisdom—in the day of Siddhattha Gotama, the Buddha (4th century B.C.E.), were expected to offer up a theory of The Absolute. (Come to think of it, they still are expected to do so; so let’s speak in the present tense here. I’ll return to Gotama in a moment.) An absolute is some Something from which all things ultimately emanate and to which all things ultimately return. Unlike the non-absolute actual world, The Absolute does not partake in the annoying and corrosive whims of change, difference, and indeterminacy. No, The Absolute is whole, complete, indivisible, and incorruptible. It is also invariably transcendent and/or pervasively immanent, indescribable, and ineffable (all claims that should raise one’s suspicions, I would think). In short, The Absolute reigns supreme as the Great And Irrefutable Explainer of The All. (You may have noticed: Absolutes tend toward Germanic capitals and Winnie-the-Poohian Monumentalityness.)
Now, you may be thinking: such a thing, an Absolute, is much too much for me; I do not deal in such grand things. But is that true? Are you sure? Following are just a few names that have been bestowed on The Absolute. Perhaps you will recognize a dear acquaintance here.
Logos; Dharma; Brahmin; Dao; The One; Intelligent Design; Universal Law; Cosmos; Fate; Destiny; Being; The It’s-All-Good; The Meant-to-Be; The Mathematical Absolute Infinite. These are names that say to you the universe in which you live is lovingly ordered, founded on reason, and inherently meaningful. These are names that proclaim: Rejoice! Contrary to all appearance, there is a True World!
God; Godhead; Brahma; Allah; Shiva; Rama; Atman; The Great Mother; The Goddess; etc., etc., etc. These are the “thousand and one” names (far too few by thousands) of the Great Deity, the Creator and Controller of All. Most believers in such an absolute seem to understand their deities in anthropomorphic terms. These names say: You are loved. You are protected. You shall escape from destinies of woe unscathed. But only if you believe in My Name! Or else . . .
There is also the lower case variety of absolutes. They are less promising than their upper case variety, but also less threatening.
water; fire; air; matter; quantum particles; bosons; superstrings. These words name underlying essences, fundamental building blocks, the basic stuff of the All. In an old Upanishad, a father imparts this idea to his son. He says, “look at all of these clay objects here, son. There are statuettes, utensils, cups, bowls, and much more besides. See how each is of a different shape, form, weight, and function?” “Indeed, it is so, father,” says the son. “And yet, as variegated as each is, all have clay as essence. Just so, son, are you perfectly identical with the essence of Brahmin. You, in fact, are that.” In short:The Universe “R” Us.
right; wrong; true; false; race; gender; democracy; justice; good; bad; me; you. Finally, every day the newspapers are filled with implicitly posited absolutes such as these.
What is the problem with this business of the Absolute? A look at the very word’s etymology will be instructive.
Absolute (adj.).
Late 14 century, from Middle French absolut (14c., Old French asolu, Modern French absolu), from Latin absolutus, past participle of absolvere “to set free, make separate” (see absolve). Most of the current senses were in Latin. Sense evolution is from “detached, disengaged,” thus “perfect, pure.” Meaning “despotic” (1610s) is from notion of “absolute in position;” hence absolutism. Absolute monarchy is recorded from 1735 (absolute king is recorded from 1610s). (Excerpted from the Online Etymological Dictionary. See link to the right.)
In my reading of this definition, the first problem with an absolute is that it “makes separate.” In fact, that is its very job. The Absolute is absolute precisely because it is trans-sentient, transcendent, beyond. The whole purpose of invoking an absolute is to allow for something unchanging in a world of change. “God is my rock.” More prosaically (and hence insidiously) Madison Avenue proclaims: “In a changing world one thing remains the same: The Prudential.” In the logic of the Absolute, it is just this “detachment, disengagement” that renders it “perfect, pure.” Why? Because your Absolute is utterly unruffled by the complex contingencies of the actual, and heart-breakingly messy, world–its uncertainty, multiplicity, serendipity, happenstance, playfulness, whim, vagary, caprice.
When we observe the world, is there really any wonder why we grasp at absolutes? I am not surprised in the least. I, too, of course, feel the “metaphysical need” (in Schopenhauer’s terms) for cosmic security. What feeling person does not yearn to escape from life somehow intact? Who does not fervently desire for his loved ones eternal safety? Who, in short, does not ache for absolution—for final, blissful, separation from the fire of consciousness?
Yet, our definition tells us that there is a dear, dear price to be paid for our absolution. That price is thedespotism of The Absolute. The despotism involves a doubling down of “making separate.” When I look to an absolute—for security, sureness, an answer and an explanation, in short, for help—am I not at the same time separating myself from myself, my life from my life?
This was precisely Gotama’s conclusion. For this reason, when asked to come clean on his notion of The Absolute, he did so, but in an extraordinarily ironic manner. His words have come down to us in a dialogue known as the Sabba Sutta: The Discourse on the All. I have written on this issue on this blog and elsewhere, so I will be brief. Gotama uses the language expected of him: he names an “All.” But what he identifies as this All is nothing more or less than the common human sensorium: eye and the seen; ear and the heard; nose and the smelled; tongue and the tasted; body and the felt; mind and the thought. He does not look beyond this sensorium, to, for instance, a deity or cosmic force; and he does not look within it, to, for instance, some minute element, such as water or fire or Atman or soul, concomitant with other entities and with the universe as a whole. Gotama says the “true world,” the totality, the whole, the absolute, is right on the surface of things. Look no further than your eyes and ears. In doing so, the observer (really, the meditator) will see, of course, that there is no absolute, there is just…well, look, listen, smell! Or, he will see that “The Absolute,” like “God” or “Its-All-Good,” areindeed within the sensorium—as thoughts only! (And don’t forget the fecund offspring of “thought:’ ideas, beliefs, hopes, wishes, fantasies, and much, much more.)
Yet, good Gotama knew his fellow humans all-too-well. He said that the available world will not be enough for us, so we will persist in clinging to our absolutes and, in so doing, cause endless trouble to ourselves and to others. Is that true? No? Well, have you read the newspaper today?
E. M. Cioran sums up some of these points in his usual pugnacious yet fun language.
The Buddha does not allude to an identifiable Being. Scorning the artifices of faith, he invites us to meditation. To engage our minds, he establishes its limit…He had a different notion of man [from St. Paul]…How meditate if everything must be referred to a supreme individual? What can we seek with psalms and prayers? What can we find? It is out of sloth that we personify our divinity and then appeal to Him. The Greeks awakened to philosophy the moment their gods were no longer adequate. Ideas begin where Olympus leaves off. To think [[[Gotama]] would add: and to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, too] is to stop venerating, to rebel against an enigma [and, let's add, a despot] and proclaim its bankruptcy. (From the essay “Rages and Resignations,” in The Temptation to Exist. I edited without changing the meaning.)
For those readers who would like to consider further this idea of Absolute-free living, I offer two useful text excerpts, below. The first is from William James’s essay “What is Pragmatism?” The second piece is from Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. Happy trails.
I. What Pragmatism Means
Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of quest. You know how men have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know what a great part in magic words have always played. If you have his name, or the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his will. So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe’s principle, and to possess it is after a fashion to possess the universe itself. “God,” “Matter,” “Reason,” “the Absolute,” “Energy,” are so many solving names. You can rest when you have them. You are at the end of your metaphysical quest.
But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such word as closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed.
Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work. Being nothing essentially new, it harmonizes with many ancient philosophic tendencies. It agrees with nominalism for instance, in always appealing to particulars; with utilitarianism in emphasizing practical aspects; with positivism in its disdain for verbal solutions, useless questions and metaphysical abstractions.
II. How “The True World” Finally Became a Fable. The History of an Error.
The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man of virtue—he lives in it, he is it. (The most ancient form of the idea was relatively clever, simple, convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition “I, Plato, am the truth.”)
The true world which is unattainable for the moment, is promised to the sage, to the pious man and to the man of virtue (”to the sinner who repents”). (Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more insidious, more evasive—it becomes a woman [my apologies here; I wholly disagree with Nietzsche's view of women. GW], it becomes Christian.)
The true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot promise anything; but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an obligation, a command. (At bottom this is still the old sun; but seen through mist and skepticism: the idea has become sublime, pale, northern, Königsbergian [i.e. Immanuel Kant. GW].
The true world—is it unattainable? At all events it is unattained. And as unattained it is also unknown. Consequently it no longer comforts, nor saves, nor constrains: what could something unknown constrain us to? (The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself and yawns for the first time. The cock-crow of positivism.)
The ”true world” —an idea that no longer serves any purpose, that no longer constrains one to anything—a useless idea that has become quite superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us abolish it! (Bright daylight; breakfast; the return of common sense and of cheerfulness; Plato blushes for shame and all free-spirits kick up a shindy.)
