The Ultimate culture.

Some time ago I wrote a post where I explored Plato’s PNC

—Principle of non-contradiction and suggested how it seems to make sense that no two things can exist in the same place at the same time. The outgrowth of this principle has unarguably created the view that mutual discretion is a fact of life. You are you and I am me and neither of us can be in the same place at the same time. Consequently, the logical outgrowth of the PNC turns out to be alienation and self-service at the expense of others and this basic notion manifests in various ways across the spectrum of culture.

The alternative to the PNC is that two dissimilar things always exist in the same place at the same time. How can such an obvious conundrum be true? To answer this question we must understand a principle of truth established by The Buddha and later articulated by Nagarjuna who lived roughly 500 years after the death of The Buddha. He is credited with many elaborations of The Buddha’s teachings, especially the Prajñāpāramitā Sutra (Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom).  Importantly he is also credited with establishing the Two Truth Doctrine. Both of these say that indeed two dissimilar things do exist in the same place at the same time. In point of fact were it not so then nothing whatsoever could exist.

The primary message of both of these teachings is dependent origination: Form (everything perceptible and conditional) is equal to śūnyatā (emptiness or the realm of unconditionality): the direct opposite of conditional life. They must exist together since emptiness is the eternal wellspring of everything. Said in other terms, everything is united in this unconditional realm. Since it is unconditional there can’t be any discrimination, judgment, or duality of any kind.

This realm is called by many names: Buddha-Nature, Unity, God, etc. The name is not important since any and all names are abstractions of something transcendent to articulation. And furthermore, even though it is imperceptible, this realm is pervasive and ubiquitous—it inhabits all of creation. When Jesus said “the Father is in me,and I in the Father” he was stating the highest truth. What we fail to consider is that this unification is true for all of us. Just preceding this statement Jesus also said, “…“Is it not written in your Law ‘I have said you are “gods”’? If he (God) called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside…”

We are going through the throws of cultural death because we doubt this message of unconditional divine incarnation. Dependent origination demands that nothing can exist without the fusion of opposites to create wholeness. The opposite of conditional discrimination is unconditional nondiscrimination and these two inhabit all life (one part of which is us) so the notion of the PNC is not only untrue, it is impossible.

A philosophy is a mental fabrication designed to come close to truth but this is truth itself and when anyone stands against truth the cosmos gets really mad and produces what none of us wants—suffering. And it makes no difference whether we are talking about a single individual, a culture or the entire universe. Everything is only one unconditional, indescribable non-thing. You and I are One. We are united and to damage you is the same thing as damaging myself, and the opposite. Unconditional love is the fundamental truth of the universe and that is a much better plan than the PNC for all cultures.