Sunday, July 31, 2005

The search for truth

Here's another story from Anthony de Mello's One Minute Wisdom:

Doctrine

To a visitor who claimed he had no need to search for Truth because he found it in the beliefs of his religion, the Master said:

"There was once a student who never became a mathematician because he blindly believed the answers he found at the back of his math textbook - and, ironically, the answers were correct."
Think about that. Really think about it. And then remember that the appeal of fundamentalism has to do with an attachment to certainty -- and that's quite different from the search for truth.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:28 PM

    I like to distinguish between believing in something and knowing something because I have experienced it, such as grace or divine love. would you comment on how one's experience impacts the search for truth?

    a. callaway

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think experience is part of the package but not all of it. Some people, because of early trauma, have terrible experiences but that's not necessarily indicative of ultimate truth.

    Ann, I'm very glad to hear from you and I hope you read this. I got your email and tried to reply but kept getting an error message - the message won't send. I tried getting Cynthia to send it from her email account and that wouldn't send either. Something about your account isn't receiving messages from either of us.

    ReplyDelete

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