Distance Factor, Angle Factor: Perspectives

A few days ago I got another reminder of how your views and perspective are more dependent on where you are now, than any sort of universal truth. Several of us were setting up some flower arrangements around a tree and each person was standing in a different position so we all saw "center" as a different place. It was outside and the goal was to have the arrangements placed so that the oak tree was centered between them, but all of us had a different idea of where the audience was going to sit, so we all saw "center" as relative to where we were standing - so it was different for each of us. And actually all of us ended up being "wrong" in the end. That may be hard to follow. Perhaps an easier way to explain this is to post this image:

Sitting close to your monitor, you see Mr Angry on the left and Mrs Calm on the right. Now, get up from your chair and back up 10 feet or so. Watch them switch positions. That's what I mean. What you see, depends on where you are looking from. That's why arguing about truth is so futile. You can be absolutely sure of what you are seeing, but the other person is looking from a different position and sees a different truth. Each may be "true" but the difference in perspective makes them seem different. And most people have a hard time believing that multiple opposing views can be true at one time.

Adyashanti actually addresses this in an interesting way:

There is a very famous poem written by the third patriarch of Zen, Seng-tsan, called the Hsin-Hsin Ming, which translates as Verses in Faith Mind. In this poem Seng-tsan writes these lines: "Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinions." This is a reversal of the way most people go about trying to realize absolute truth. Most people seek truth, but Seng-tsan is saying not to seek truth. This sounds very strange indeed. How will you find truth if you don't seek it? How will you find happiness if you do not seek it? How will you find God if you do not seek God? Everyone seems to be seeking something. In spirituality seeking is highly honored and respected, and here comes Seng-tsan saying not to seek.

The reason Seng-tsan is saying not to seek is because truth, or reality, is not something objective. Truth is not something "out there." It is not something you will find as an object of perception or as a temporal experience. Reality is neither inside of you nor outside of you. Both "outside" and "inside" are not getting to the point. They both miss the mark because outside and inside are conceptual constructs with no inherent reality. They are simply abstract points of reference. Even words like "you," or "me," or "I," are nothing more than conceptual points of reference existing only in the mind. Such concepts may have a practical value in daily life, but when assumed to be true they distort perception and create a virtual reality, or what in the East is called the world of samsara.

Seng-tsan was a wily old Zen master. He viewed things through the eye of enlightenment and was intimately aware of how the conditioned mind fools itself into false pursuits and blind alleys. He knew that seeking truth, or reality, is as silly as a dog thinking that it must chase its tail in order to attain its tail. The dog already has full possession of its tail from the very beginning. Besides, once the dog grasps his tail, he will have to let go of it in order to function. So even if you were to find the truth through grasping, you will have to let it go at some point in order to function. But even so, any truth that is attained through grasping is not the real truth because such a truth would be an object and therefore not real to begin with.

He has more to say about it so follow the link to read it if you are interested...