PadmaVonSamba wrote:charles wrote:Is there a type of knowledge that can be attained whereby one knows with absolute certainty that something is true?
Yes. You can be absolutely sure of awareness, that awareness is occurring at this very second.
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yes, this is it exactly, except I would perhaps call it "presence" without defining exactly what is present (since all descriptions and definitions are arbitrary). This is the first recognition. The next step is recognizing the context of this recognition. This is harder to talk about, although it can be pointed at by first arriving at astonishment at the fact that there is something (presence) rather than nothing, then "turning towards" that in you which is able to experience the state-of-affairs which enables you to be astonished. It then becomes possible to understand existentially that there is indeed a ground of being (your being, the world's being, it makes no difference, its all the same), that that ground is beyond any particulars (it would be the same for any sentient being of any kind in any possible place and time), that the ground, since it is beyond all particulars, is not a "thing", but that is not a lack of any kind, rather it makes our "thinghood" both infinitely illusory and, at the same time, infinitely profound and beautiful, and at the same time confirms that our real nature is beyond our thinghood and is, indeed, the ground. Neither the Buddha, nor Plato, nor Jesus, was lying.
Thoroughly tame your own mind.
This is (possibly) the teaching of Buddha.
"I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind."
- Descartes, 2nd Meditation 25