Hehe, what a fascinating thread in my view
. In reading the posts there was much I wanted to say along the way to individual posts, but in trying to summarize in my own head while doing so what I was seeing I realized that the issue for me is all about having opinions and that made me think of a Zen story that I associate with deep understanding of that issue. Well when I went to right that story down, I realized that I didn't really have the words down pat to tell that story so I went to look it up on the web and lo and behold I got a google link that read:
"
Zen masters say "Don't seek the truth - just drop your opinions
www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/sayings.htm Proxy Highlight
Zen Sayings ... The famous saying of Ch'ing-yüan Wei-hsin (Seigen Ishin): ... For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again ...:
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Here is the story or quote I was looking for:
Mountains are Mountains
The famous saying of Ch'ing-yüan Wei-hsin (Seigen Ishin):
老僧三十年前未參禪時、見山是山、見水是水、及至後夾親見知識、有箇入處、見山不是山、見水不是水、而今得箇體歇處、依然見山秪是山、見水秪是水 (The Way of Zen 220 k)
"Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters. 13
13
Ch'uan Teng Lu, 22. (The Way of Zen 126)"
I had these thoughts because the search for reliable information, is just a subset of seeking truth and validating it to others. I went on that search long ago. I wanted to find God and meaning, to be able to prove that life is good and the value of morality. I wanted to prove my assumptions were right, a search that for reasons of something perverse in my merciless sense of honesty completely failed. The simple mountains that I knew in my youth, by simple presence and being, were washed away by a hunger for certainty. I lost my simple being in a state of duality and complexity and need. Maybe it was Occam's Razor that slashed my tires, but my journey ended in hopelessness and failure. I couldn't prove or substantiate a single one of my sacred beliefs and they all went poof and disappeared in a sea of black depression and misery. I died. I simply let go and gave up, totally defeated It was only there in total failure and loss and surrender that something awakened in me. I am and my being needs nothing to be. Mountains are mountains and everything is very simple. I nave no need to know anything. I have no opinions that matter. There is nowhere to go, nothing to become, nothing to learn or to see, but I live in a sea of people who know things or rather cling to them believing they natter.
Misinformation is a disaster if you need certainty, if you still cling to meaning, if you don't know that nobody knows anything.
The mind seeking answers is a cat chasing its tail.