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Contrary to
what the climate change naysayers wish us to believe, science is grounded in fact, not
based on arbitrary opinion: science is an exacting, self-correcting
experimental method for determining, based on the information given, what facts
are true and what the relationship, if any, exists between facts.[1]
But, as
Carl Jung and many others have asserted, there are other equally legitimate whys
of knowing based on symbols, mythology, or even through our imagination and our own lived bodily experience.
One such voice is Rita M. Gross writing about Buddhism in in the Spring 2013
edition of Tricycle Magazine in an
essay entitled: The Matter of Truth: The
Heavy Cost of Literalism. A brief excerpt follows:
“[F]or many modern Buddhists, the
symbolic meanings contained in traditional forms are approached with an outlook
steeped in the worldview of the European Enlightenment, in which truth and
value lie mainly with empirical facts. Truth, in this case, is found as a
result of impersonal, objective observation, and it can be duplicated by anyone
with proper training under the same circumstances. There is little room in this
view of things for affirming meaning as it is communicated through symbolic
forms or for the understanding that, for some purposes, the value of symbolic
meaning can override empirical facts or even that sometimes factual information
is irrelevant to symbolic meaning…
One finds in Buddhist tradition a
distinction between "words" and "meaning," which are often
very different from one another, and we would do well to consider the
traditional advice-whether we are looking at statues or interpreting
teachings-to pay attention to symbolic meaning and not be limited to literal
meaning.
Traditional people recognize that what
is known through imagination, whether or not it can observed empirically, is
worthy of portrayal. We moderns, however, though we think ourselves
incomparably more sophisticated than traditional people, have little
understanding or appreciation of symbolic experience and having committed
ourselves to an empirical worldview we live within its narrow confines."
[1] The only caveat is that our
knowledge of the universe, in my opinion, is extremly rudimentary. New discoveries
will continue to overthrow established truth, creating the continuing need for new
paradigms about the nature of reality.
1 comment:
I spent about six years studying Jung and related materials. Other years with Margaret Mead, the Leakys, on and on once upon a time I was a solitary scholar of sorts.
Basically, I see it as an order of magnitude. Aboriginal (or other preceding indo-european, eastern or others were no more of less intelligent, or stupid, no more or less cruel to each other, there has been no golden time though there have been and still are small communities of of harmony.
Now, we hear all, see all (or think we do) with such a deluge of information, unsorted, unexplained, from everywhere---
Why, for instance, use this internet? Think of the industry of waste it perpetuates.
People are people then and now.
Jung was brilliant and inspiring because of his scholarship. He was not a particularly nice person---he used women, was a sexist, a bigot (NO I am not referring to the specious accusations of Nazi sympathy--)--he was self-centered and unlikely to open his door to a stranger---
He did what he needed to survive, like the rest of us but was far more sheltered than most (and yes I know of his travels etc.)---
Love to read his work and use it, wouldn't want to meet the man.
(ok I am having a bad day but...)
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