When to tell the truth

This is the first part of my blog post and the quotation is taken from The Concealed Art of the Soul, Passage on Dangerous Truths:

“The Buddha too comes across as reluctant to speak the truth about the self; indeed, he is portrayed as wondering at first whether to try to teach it at all. In a telling moment, he is made to liken his ideas to a snake, hard to grasp safely, dangerous if seized the wrong way. More often, he is given to speak in parables,…”

This section stood out the most to me in the entire section because it’s the most important lesson for one to understand about knowledge. When the question is asked what is the meaning of life? That phrase in itself is a normative question derived from a normative word which is life. We have the biological and scientifical explanations for how to determine a person is alive but what is the meaning of life? There are thousands and millions of answers to that exact question because in reality every one perceives life, their own individual life, to mean something different than someone else.

And the fact that the meaning of life can’t be measured or broken down into one to two simple explanations it’s that reason alone that the Buddha feared trying to blatantly answer that question. And he couldn’t really answer that question because there is no one answer; or to some there may not be an answer at all but if there is an answer then it’s up to us, the people or followers, to figure out and understand the meaning for ourselves. Something this grand and massive can’t merely be given to us but we have to seek it for ourselves.

Because we would not be able to handle the truth about the things the Buddha has already seen, or the things he knows. Somewhere the translation would be lost and that’s why it’s easier to speak in parables to say things are like something else or such as because if we knew the truth we would not be able to grasp or handle it at one time. So does that mean we don’t deserve to know the truth? Don’t deserve to understand the meaning? No. It means we have to read and reread the texts, follow the teachings and try to seek understanding for ourselves as well as vision for ourselves. If the truth got out and taken in the wrong context it could lead to disaster for oneself or many if we can’t comprehend what it is we should comprehend at the time. At least that’s what I got from that passage.