"I am the way, the truth , and the life: no
man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
—John 14:6

"What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors,
metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a
sum of human relations which have been poetically
and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and
embellished, and which, after long usage, seem
to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding."
—Friedrich Nietzsche

What is the nature of truth? What do we mean when we speak of truth, anyway? Like so many of the most important concepts in our lives — most of them words we use on a daily basis — it seems to almost elude a good definition.

A dictionary will tell you it has something to do with conforming to 'fact or actuality' or a statement 'proven or accepted to be true'. The first uses other hard-to-pin-down terms (actuality?) to define it, and the second is simply circular.

First of all, we must acknowledge there are many types of truths we use. Sometimes we're talking about big-t Truth, sometimes it's little-t truth. Sometimes truth has to do with intentionality, other times we relate it to some presumed objective reality.

There are no truths. There are no lies. In a universe that is illusion, where our thoughts and beliefs dictate the very nature of reality, truth is perhaps the most subjective and slippery beast in an already hopelessly subjective existence.

So there. We've gotten that out of the way. I've acknowledged that with everything being subjective we can have no real truth. The postmodernists are cheering, the foundationalists booing. Now that we've said it, let's just move right on past it. If we have this word, let's give it meaning within the context of an illusive reality. What good to have words that we define right out of existence? Pointless, I say.

I will postulate, then, that for many of us truth has something to do with those things we accept within the illusion as being an accurate representation of the group consensus. Truth then, is fluid. By which I do not mean to say (as some postmodernists would say) that truth exists only in the discourse, but rather that the foundations are capable of being shifted with a great deal of intentionality.

For many scientifically-minded people, truth has a great deal more to do with so-called objective data than with a subjective reality. While I may say a ball is blue, and you may say that ball is green, and we can argue for days about which is true, a scientist might just tell us the wavelength interval of that light is about 497mm, and consider the matter decided. For us, of course, there is no important truth to be gleaned from the light's wavelength — we are concerned solely with the desire to reach a consensus on an ultimately subjective appraisal.

We are arguing, an epistomolist might say, not about true knowledge, but about belief. We believe the color of the ball to be either blue or green, but we have no acceptable justification for this belief. If, on the other hand, our scientist friend were to join our lively debate and insist that the ball was in fact cyan — well, by the philosopher's model he would have a justified true belief — and therefore, knowledge. Not only would he be arguing in favor of his belief, but he would have a justification for that belief (knowing the wavelengths of light and how they are classically defined along the color spectrum).

I say justification is less important than belief in the dictate of truth. For me, there is no more validity to the measurements of a device functioning according to Laws I neither believe in, nor understand, than there is in the cognitive process my mind follows to reach a decision. Indeed, there is much more validity in my own thought process, since it is something I can believe with no trace of doubt exists.

So what is truth? Well I have already introduced the Cartesian a priori existence of a thinker, and I will build upon that to define truth simply as the beliefs that thinker holds. It is not difficult to see now why truth must be fluid — a thinker will undoubtably change her mind over the course of time, as a function of experience.

Let us touch then on Truth. Is there an objective reality underlying the illusions and confusion we are surrounded with? Is there a Platonic space somewhere in which drift all manner of things in their purest form? Does the Mind of God hold within it some grand plan that can be called Truth?

Though I accept the Cartesian claim, my Foundationalism ceases there. The only Truth must be the lack of absolute Truth. Capital-T truth, as lowercase-t truth, is built upon the belief of the thinker. I believe in God. A God exists. I believe in a Goddess. A Goddess exists. I believe in the Truth that Love is the highest attainment. Therefore it is True that Love is the highest attainment. The thinker is the ultimate power — capable even of limiting and redictating the bounds of that power.

Like the God who creates a rock too heavy to lift, so may the thinker, unbounded by absolutes, create these Truths in abundence to chain herself to a reality. This is what we have done, every single one of us. We have determined Truths that we bind ourselves with. For some, it is the Truth in a scientifically determinist universe; for others it is the Truth in a God both omniscient and omnipotent; for still others it is whatever Truth the paradigm holds at the moment.

Even those who claim to be unfettered by a belief in Truth can be seen to blatantly accept certain manifest physical truths. Ask anyone who claims to hold no preconceived notions about the truth of the world to jump off a building, and see whether they comply (a shame if they do, and their belief is not strong enough). Were they truly equally skeptical of all common truths, jumping off of a building should pose no more danger in their minds than, for example, standing up. If truth is truly defined moment by moment, by the beliefs of the observer, then the laws of gravity are no more than a series of chance events that have (according to some) happened many times. So we should be able to leap from the building and dictate our own Truth in that instant.

And indeed, we can. But to do so, we must be certain we are truly free of our indoctrinated belief structures, else we might find ourselves succumbing to the consentual force that is gravity. It is not, therefore, an underlying objective Truth that sets physical, mental and spiritual limits on us — it is our belief in those limits.

In many schools of Buddhism (particularly the Soto Zen) one finds the idea that we are all awakened Buddhas, and the 'process' of enlightenment is simply open one's eyes. This is akin to the concept of Truth I have been discussing. We could not be beings (or Buddhas) without this perfection. The perfection is not an exterior goal we strive towards, and we are not a vessel for this perfection. We are the perfection. The perfection is us. But we are dull, blind perfect beings, struggling to acknowledge this very simple truth.

By acknowledge, I do not mean hear it and say it. I can do that, I am doing that. I mean embrace it on a fundamental level. Know it as Truth. Live the Truth. Feel it with such conviction and certainty that any other way is revealed for the absurdity it is.

I will end this page before it spirals into a discussion on our inability to see our own perfection, our feeling that things are lacking from what is innately a perfect existence, or any other such foolishness.