This collection of short writings composed in the 1990s and completed in 2000 is now surpassed by the in-depth studies I have been able to undertake over the following twenty years, during which I have not limited myself to reading texts and attending a few lectures, but have also attended authentic Buddhadharma teachings.
The purpose of this site is not to impart teachings but to offer reflections to anyone interested in philosophy without adjectives—by which I mean neither "Eastern" nor "Western." I believe the separation between East and West is still strong, but that great progress has been made. One of the driving forces behind this progress is the initiative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has firmly established a dialogue with Western knowledge, understood primarily as the scientific rather than philosophical world. He has supported the establishment of stable institutions, particularly the Mind and Life Institute , which has the specific purpose of bringing together science and contemplative wisdom.
On the other hand, science is increasingly moving closer to Buddhist thought. Physics in particular has completely dismantled traditional concepts such as matter, arriving at a conception of reality that, in my opinion, is fully compatible with the Madhyamika vision, but no longer with traditional European materialism.
However, I don't see a similar comparison on the philosophical level. To my surprise, I found a comparative philosophical analysis, focusing precisely on Prasangika Madhyamika, the primary school of Tibetan Buddhism, compared with other Indian currents, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, and with Western philosophy, in a book originally published in 1954 in English by Allen & Unwin and then in Italian by Ubaldini in 1983: "The Central Philosophy of Buddhism" by TRV Murti. I find it a valuable work for its in-depth examination of the Madhyamika conception in relation to other Buddhist schools, but also to the major Hindu schools, especially Shankara's Advaita Vedanta, and to Western philosophy, particularly Kant and the German idealists, as well as positivism.
Professor Murti concludes that Madhyamika effectively surpasses all the currents examined and should be considered an indispensable philosophical foundation for the modern world. I find the comparison with Kant's criticism particularly interesting, given my own personal background. Essentially, according to Murti, of all Western philosophers, Kant is the one closest to Madhyamika, while idealism goes completely astray. The Critique of Pure Reason, which destroys both rationalism and empiricism point by point while demonstrating the real foundation of science's validity, is an equivalent of Nagarjuna's Madhyamakakarika. Regarding the Critique of Practical Reason, Murti confirms that it is flawed because it fails to reach Nagarjuna's conclusions, despite starting from premises that bring Kant's thought, starting from independent and typically Western premises, to a striking alignment with Madhyamika. Kant, however, had no other access than the Christian religion, to which he personally adhered and which was not fully compatible with his own thought. I have covered this issue in Ethics and Metaphysics , which is still substantially quite valid although I should correct it and deepen it in light of what I have learned in the meantime and what Murti says.
Idealism, on the other hand, is completely off track. It's curious to see Fichte and his ego confronting the Buddhist demonstration that the ego has no intrinsic existence—in effect, Fichte's thought is destroyed from the start. Hegel's fundamental thesis that the rational is real and the real is rational, once thoroughly analyzed in the light of Buddhist thought, is tantamount to saying that mental constructions (vikalpa) are real and the only reality—when all of Buddhadharma holds that mental constructions are the product of ignorance and a source of suffering. Indeed, Hegelian idealism has historically been used to support various forms of political totalitarianism, causing immense suffering.
The following chapters are a bit out of date, I'll leave them but warn that while they are not entirely incorrect, they require corrections and further study.
Alberto Cavallo, August 21, 2022
The answer to the first question is no, absolute truth cannot be achieved through reason. In terms of traditional Western philosophy, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason remains unsurpassed, clearing the field of "proofs" for God's existence and enunciating quite clearly why what he calls ideas of reason are destined to remain objectless.
Even accepting that it is impossible to give content to the ideas of reason, one might think that there is another way to reach absolute truth, through pure logic, which is nothing other than thought pushed to the extreme of formalization. Kant believed that mathematical truth was absolute by virtue of transcendental forms; the logicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries hoped to achieve the same result through a formal logical system. But Gödel's undecidability theorem definitively clarified the impossibility of constructing thought on the form of logic alone: no such system can ever contain the whole truth; truths that cannot be formally demonstrated will always remain. As for Kantian categories, theoretical physics has transcended them by demonstrating that it is possible to construct and verify scientific theories incompatible with them.
The only way out lies in a clear distinction between relative truth and absolute truth. The latter is unattainable for humans; we do not know whether other beings have attained it or can attain it. The weakness of human thought means that these same arguments nevertheless fall within the realm of the relative.
The correct distinction between relative and absolute truth was first comprehensively posed by the second-century Indian philosopher Nagarjuna. The Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, which he founded, provided the philosophical foundations of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly the dGe-lugs-pa (pronounced Gelūpa) school, and historically contributed to the birth of the Chinese Chan school and ultimately to Japanese Zen, which is still very present today, though less so than other Buddhist schools, and is also well-known in the West. These currents, however, have abandoned the very idea of inquiry on the level of reasoning, following the influence of the philosophical Taoism of Lao-zi and Zhuang-zi.
A superficial analysis of Mâdhyamaka leads one to compare it to the skeptical currents present in both the East and the West: its doctrine seems solely aimed at destroying others, without proposing anything constructive. This leads one to the skepticism of the Middle Academy or the Cynics of ancient Greece, as well as the freethinkers of the eighteenth century. How do these schools differ, if they all uphold the fallacy of all knowledge?
To clarify this difference, we must begin with a consideration that may displease some, but is essential: those who maintain the falsity of every theory must continue to live, applying reason, will, sensitivity, and intuition to the daily events of life, whatever concept they admit to having on the subject. What remains ultimately depends on the philosopher's cultural foundations rather than on a deliberate construction of his thought.
Western thought, however, is rooted in reason and absolute truth of a mathematical nature (for the Greeks, geometric): "He who does not know geometry, let him not enter" was written at the entrance to the Academy. This stems from the way Greek civilization established mathematics as the ideal model of knowledge, having first understood it as a logical construct rather than a set of techniques. The Christian religion is a syncretism of Semitic monotheism and Hellenic philosophy, and has further entrenched the concept that absolute and well-defined truths exist: God is truth first and foremost. "In the beginning was the logos," says the Gospel of John: Jesus Christ identifies with the word/reasoning of God. Through the logos, God created the world: essences come before creation.
As a result, Western thinkers find no other possibilities than reason and faith. But skepticism overwhelms both, because Western religion is steeped in reason. Historical Christianity, in fact, is identified by a set of dogmas, which are assertions that are meaningful only if language and logic are given. The existence of God and the soul are understood as absolute truths, but if the very concept of God, the concept of the soul, the concept of existence cannot be founded in some way on language and reason, then dogmas become empty formulas. In the beginning was the logos—which in Greek means word/thought/reason together.
Eastern thought did not introduce this premise. For example, the word of the Vedas is first sound, then meaning, according to the mimâmsâ (one of the six traditional Vedic schools, or darsana ), and is absolute as sound , not as meaning . In the beginning was the sabda – the cosmic sound/syllable Om.
Buddhism, abandoning Vedic revelation, also abandoned those metaphysical concepts, though present in the thought of the Vedic schools, that are more familiar to Westerners: the personal God, the very existence of the soul. The deities take a back seat to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, who are beings who have achieved enlightenment through a chain of existences. The various schools differ on specific metaphysical points, but the fundamental concept of impermanence and emptiness as foundations of the world of appearance is common to all. For the clarity of those unfamiliar with Buddhist thought, I remind you that the individual and the soul are not considered real, and the chain of existences is to be understood as an ongoing process and not as the persistence of a being: it can be compared to the flame of a candle, or a flowing river. Reincarnation is like the act of lighting a candle with another that is about to go out: the flame is no longer the same, even if in some way it is the continuation of the previous one.
The next step taken by Nāgārjuna consists in denying, on the level of the absolute, Buddhist doctrine itself. This, in its various versions, remains valid on the level of relative truth, as a practical means to attain enlightenment. This is a completely natural development, considering that the historical Buddha, as reported in the oldest texts of the Pali Canon, explicitly stated that he wanted to teach a method and not a metaphysics.
Chan, and then Zen, took this attitude to the extreme, abolishing all doctrinal teaching. Enlightenment is sought solely through meditation. But Chan/Zen methods are only suitable for people already equipped with specific intellectual qualities (not including the level of education, which may be irrelevant), capable of leaping directly beyond the rationalistic stage.
The everydayness of life, from which we began, is exalted by these schools to the point of becoming the central object of meditation: the tathata, which we have attempted to translate as "suchness," the event itself that precedes all elaboration. According to the school of sudden enlightenment, the most insignificant of everyday events can spark a person's enlightenment.
Other schools, such as the aforementioned dGe-lugs-pa, which is inspired by Nâgârjuna's Mâdhyamaka, instead give great importance to logic as a tool for teaching and consolidating the doctrine.
From a Western perspective, this is a contradiction: a means is used whose inadequacy is affirmed from the outset. But Eastern doctrines present themselves as paths , not systems . They are procedures, methods, not statically organized structures. Reason alone does not allow one to travel the entire path, but is used to travel a certain stretch; indeed, at this stage, it is considered indispensable by the Madhyamaka. Other schools do without it, because they address different people: no path is suitable for everyone.
What is essentially common to all Eastern thought is the recognition that the highest knowledge is nonverbal, nondiscursive: "the highest discourse is without words" (Zhuang-zi). In the East, it is accepted that one can (some say, must) begin with reasoning to arrive at the wisdom (prajña) that lies beyond it; the concept of faith does not exist. Prajña is not faith, it is direct knowledge of the absolute obtained through a method, a path; it cannot be translated into formalized articles, it is not compatible with a "creed" like the Christian creed of Nicaea, because prajña cannot be expressed in words, and any verbal formula serves only as a means, a support, to direct oneself to wisdom, but is intrinsically incapable of expressing absolute truth.
For Westerners, however, faith is the absolute certainty of the formula: if I say "I believe in God the Father ... creator of heaven and earth," it means I place this affirmation absolutely, beyond all doubt and discussion. I therefore truly mean that it is indisputable that there is a God who created the world. It is actually a synthesis of Western philosophy and Semitic religiosity: the word is absolute in its meaning, just as a geometric proof is absolute in its logical structure, but it takes the sacred text or dogma as its starting point. Western culture is permeated by this concept, so much so that scientists themselves, even when they clash with religious authority, maintain this attitude: Galileo said that God expresses himself in mathematical language. Ironically, those who appeal to sacred books against science adopt the same attitude, because they take such books literally, as if they were scientific texts. The "creed" is therefore treated like Euclid's axioms: a self-evident truth from its content, from which all reasoning can be derived.
We have thus reached the crucial point: Western monotheistic faith is not at all detached from the logos; rather, it uses it absolutely, constructing a "Euclidean system" based on the articles of faith. Far from being an alternative to scientific reason, it distances itself from it only because it poses inviolable premises based on sacred texts, rather than pure reason or physical evidence. Therefore, its claim to propose an absolute truth is subject to the same arguments that lead to the failure of philosophy's similar attempt: the moment religion presents itself as a form of logical and formalized knowledge, it is subjected to the same type of argumentative attack to which philosophical knowledge succumbs.
This claim to formal truth, to be fair, was not typical of the most ancient monotheism, the Jewish one. The Jewish attitude is not to seek the literalness of meaning, but the power of the word: not logos (word/ logical reasoning ) but davar (word/action). Jews have no dogmas; they have the Torah. Even among them, there are those who use it in a dogmatic, logical sense, but ultimately they betray their own culture by absorbing attitudes that are more Hellenic, Christian, or Muslim than Jewish. I will not delve further into Jewish religiosity, which would deserve more space, to return to the question of absolute truth. I will limit myself to saying that, in my opinion, by stripping it of its dogmatic aspects, which are not in themselves Jewish, it can become a path to truth, through which Christianity could also be rebuilt.
Summarizing what has been said so far, it can be stated that Western thought creates a logical-discursive structure based on certain premises based on faith (in the field of religion) or "empirical evidence" (in the field of science). Eastern thought, on the other hand, begins with a traditional worldview, analyzing it and then dismantling it through reasoning, then (or in parallel) abandoning the logical-discursive method in favor of the meditative-intuitive method.
Western thought, therefore, has reached a critical point. Mathematical logic has demonstrated its own inadequacy with Gödel's theorem: logic and mathematics cannot be based solely on themselves. Meanwhile, physical science has completely broken free from the normal categories of human thought, first with relativity and then with quantum mechanics. Time, space, and the substantiality of matter have become something else, indefinable in terms of everyday language. Physics today offers an extremely precise and effective method for describing phenomena, but it is untranslatable into everyday language. One can criticize certain formal aspects of Fritjof Capra's famous book, "The Tao of Physics," but it is true that quantum physics is more compatible with Buddha and Lao-tzu than with Aristotle and Kant.
Now we can explain why: science operates in some respects like Eastern thought, not Hellenic thought! The great scientists of the past, starting with Galileo, were too steeped in Western thought to realize this.
The founders of modern science, in fact, believed they were operating like Euclid: discovering axioms, deducible from nature but absolute and definitive once discovered, and deriving everything else through reasoning. Empirical verification would simply confirm or disprove the validity of the axioms. But here's the rub: it's never possible to verify axioms absolutely. The Galilean method was always correct, but Galileo himself believed that his discoveries, once confirmed by experience, were definitive. The physics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries challenged this conception of scientific knowledge: Einstein, for example, demonstrated that the discoveries of Galileo and Newton were not definitive even in the seemingly most solid field, the dynamics of matter points. Not that they were wrong; classical physics was simply an approximation valid within a certain range of conditions.
It has thus become clear that the scientific method is precisely a method , a path . An extraordinarily effective method for describing certain areas of phenomena. At its core is the most important concept: no discovery is ever definitive, no formulation is universally valid. It is possible to progress toward an ever-increasing understanding of phenomena, but one can never attain absolute knowledge.
Quantum mechanics has shown how a scientific theory can describe phenomena with great precision while remaining untranslatable into ordinary language; more precisely, its translation contains irreconcilable contradictions. If you don't worry about this and just look at the result, everything is fine. But this is an Eastern attitude: there is no absolute truth that can be described in words, but there are valid methods for attaining knowledge. It's no wonder, then, that contemporary science adapts to a Buddhist or Taoist view of the phenomenal world: Buddhists and Taoists have always denied any dogma, any essence, any definitive discourse on the world.
The Eastern world failed to develop science because it never went through a period in which it developed trust in mathematics as a method. Conversely, the West found itself deprived of a spiritual discipline capable of advancing its scientific capabilities because it developed a dogmatic religiosity, which viewed mathematics as a model rather than a method.
Today, the West has reached a certain awareness of having lost absolute truth. The majority of Westerners seek to rediscover it through fidelity to traditional religion. Non-religious schools of thought are in disarray; Marxism was the last to fall. But it has no way out, because Western schools of thought are permeated with dogmatism. The superficial, magical, and charlatan aspects of Eastern thought are discernible, while the great spiritual traditions remain unknown to most.
The best thing the West has created is science, which by definition seeks not absolute truth but the best available explanation. The best thing the East has created is the investigation of human nature in its spiritual component, an investigation aimed at finding the method to free man from the anguish of his condition.
We must therefore reconstruct a worldview that takes into account both human traditions. What the best parts of both have in common is their presentation as methods, not preordained endpoints. This is not syncretism; it means embracing the viewpoint that for everything there are methods, techniques, and paths, none of which are absolutely valid, all useful in their respective fields. Absolute truth is unattainable except through an individual spiritual journey. It is up to each of us to find our own path, while maintaining respect for others.
Alberto Cavallo, August 14, 2000
The Great Way has no gate
, but there are thousands of paths.
Once you enter its barrier
, you proceed, alone, into the universe.
Let's therefore adopt the classical definition of truth as a correspondence between language and facts: we say that a proposition is true if it expresses (corresponds to) a true fact. This is essentially Aristotle's definition, from which Alfred Tarski developed his version of mathematical logic. Now, we're not following a logical procedure in the strict sense, so the definition is fine as it is.
Like all definitions, ours shifts the focus to the definition of the terms it introduces: "language" and "fact." The language we're referring to should be human language in the broadest sense, meaning the set of all human natural and artificial languages. Why should we adopt such a broad definition? Because we want to speak of absolute truth: any restriction would render the definition inadequate.
As for "facts," the definition must again be as general as possible. A fact would therefore be anything that falls within the sphere of experience, reason, intuition, transcendence, including the highest and most general entities (the world, God, Brahman, etc.).
Is it possible, then, for a proposition in human language to correspond absolutely with an absolute fact? The very fact that it is "human" language means that an unconditional, absolute correspondence with an unconditional, absolute fact is impossible, since man, and therefore his language, is by nature limited. No proposition in human language can express the absolute. Human language, inextricably linked to human reason, which in turn is linked to human nature in general, inherently introduces a limitation on what it can express.
According to the definition we have given, absolute truth, therefore, is not expressible.
At this point, it could be objected that the definition we chose was still too restrictive, despite the efforts made to make it as general as possible.
We can remove the restriction on the sphere of language: we also accept non-human languages. But by definition, a truly non-human language is inaccessible to us. A non-human language accessible to us would be reducible to human language, so it would not eliminate the restriction. We would, in fact, be able to identify translation rules in our language, or at least in the concepts that underlie language. But language is based on the human intellect's capacity for distinction and conceptualization, which by its very nature is not absolute, due to the very fact that it introduces distinctions based on the faculties of a limited being.
From our point of view, a truth referring to a non-human language is inaccessible on the conceptual level, and therefore for all intents and purposes it does not exist for us.
One might then consider eliminating language entirely. At this point, however, philosophical argument, which by its very nature relies on language, comes to a halt. Absolute truth must be pursued through spiritual wisdom (prajña), to be achieved by non-linguistic means and therefore not inherent to the intellect, but rather to some other spiritual faculty.
Alberto Cavallo, August 22, 1996
"The supreme Way has no name; the supreme discourse has no words." [Zhuang-zi, chap. II] .
The existence of macroscopic material objects has been masterfully analyzed in the classic Buddhist text Milindapañha, in which the Buddhist monk Nâgâsena demonstrates to the Greek king Milinda (Menander) that his chariot does not exist. Considering the chariot's parts one by one, we see that none of them is the chariot; however, the chariot is said to exist when these perfectly distinct parts are viewed as a whole. By separating the parts that constitute the chariot, the chariot vanishes; "chariot" is revealed to be the conventional name for a collection of parts. Let us also consider what happens when two chariots are dismantled, their parts mixed together, and then reassembled at random, creating two new chariots from the combined parts of the original two. What happens to the identity of the original chariots?
There is therefore no escape from the non-existence of the individual material object. As Western philosophers (Locke, Hume, Kant) have recognized in other ways, substance is a category of the intellect. Individual objects have no essence of their own.
But what about universals? It's enough to read the Highway Code, to stick with the topic of carts and wheeled vehicles, to see them vanish. What is an automobile? How does it differ from a motorcycle or a truck? The definitions of these objects, upon careful analysis, reveal themselves to be completely arbitrary: for example, a vehicle called a quadricycle is permitted , a motor vehicle exists, while an automobile does not. Comparing the definitions in the Italian Highway Code with those commonly adopted in everyday language, we realize that vehicle classifications can be made in a wide variety of ways. Common sense ends up adopting definitions that are convenient for everyday use, without too many subtleties.
So, does Aristotelian form have an existence of its own? Certainly not. The form of an object exists only in relation to someone or something that perceives and classifies that object. The dog breed expert sees a passing dog as a "Doberman" rather than a "Boxer" or a "Terrier." The inexperienced person simply sees a "dog." Neither is wrong, although one might argue that one knows more, and their classification is more refined. This observation helps us understand that truth, which remains relative, is only established within a culture. Each object is "truly" what experts on that type of object say about it. Only the entire population within a given context can, through the combined knowledge of its subjects, define all the objects it comes into contact with. But this means that different cultures will have different visions. The Chinese (experts) see entirely different constellations in the starry sky than Westerners (experts).
Modern physics has destroyed substance even more profoundly. Material entities can be interpreted as particles or waves. The two interpretations are incompatible, but they are simultaneously valid. The paradox is perfectly resolved in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, but it cannot be translated into the ordinary categories of human thought (I emphasize that these are concepts commonly accepted by physicists).
But we ourselves are made of particles—which aren't really particles! The entire phenomenal world, according to 20th-century physics, is based on entities to which the traditional category of substance cannot be applied. In fact, this category applies to particles, not waves, but physics tells us that particles are also waves.
So, do particles exist or not? And what about ourselves?
First, we must accept that an object does not exist without a subject, that is, that something exists or does not exist only in relation to an observer. Is this an idealistic conclusion? What is the condition of the mountains on the far side of the Moon? And what about the mountains of the Archaeozoic?
Existence in the apparent absence of anyone who can verify it can be resolved as follows: an Archaeozoic mountain had no one to see it, and therefore classify and name it, while noting that there is much arbitrariness in defining a mountain; its existence is somehow part of a chain of phenomena that reach us, and can therefore be deduced. The existence of things that are absolutely inconceivable to us falls within the realm of the arbitrary, of myth. Saying "there is or has been a universe devoid of observers" may make sense based on a theory of the origin of universes, but precisely because that theory establishes a connection, we become indirect observers of that universe. By investigating it, we produce events that lead us to draw deductions and construct a concept of that universe.
But the universe is not produced by the subject: Dr. Johnson's response to Berkeley's claim that matter did not exist was like kicking a stone. The response, in its nonverbal nature, was perfect: the starting point is what Buddhist philosophy calls tathata, which we might call "elementary experience not elaborated by the intellect." It is the basis of things, Kant's thing-in-itself. Each of us subjectively experiences it, not produces it; it is prior to the subject and the object, thus escaping the objectivity sought by science as well as idealistic subjectivity. The elaboration accomplished by the intellect, then, creates objective reality, which should be understood generally as an intellectual construction, as discourse/rationalization (logos).
Through the scientific method, which relies on the development of theories based on mathematical language and Galilean experimentation, a type of objective knowledge is achieved, which can be shared by all who understand the method. Subjective aspects are eliminated. This constitutes a limitation of the scientific method, so much so that its application to the study of the human mind is facing the impossibility of describing its subjective aspects.
The meditative experiences of Eastern mystics are also the result of reproducible procedures, thus constituting an alternative method of knowledge, referring to the non-discursive sphere. Sharing occurs through the repetition of an irreducibly subjective experience.
These are not two alternatives between which one must choose: rather, they are methods of accessing different spheres, both however present in human nature, which is simultaneously rational and irrational.
Only full awareness of the inaccessibility of absolute, discursive truth allows us to approach existence completely free of prejudice, placing each question within its proper sphere. Cultural oppositions do not disappear, but rather acquire a constructive function. Once the field is cleared of essences, we can see everything in a new light; above all, we can recognize that there are different paths to knowledge, without falling into cultural relativism.
Alberto Cavallo, December 29, 1997
The text contains words from languages that are not written with the Latin alphabet. The limitations of HTML and the need to avoid problems with browser and operating system settings have led me to choose transcription or transliteration methods that require some clarification.
For Sanskrit, I encountered the greatest difficulty, as it would require diacritical marks not available in the standard character sets. I used the circumflex accent to indicate long vowels and simply omitted the unavailable diacritical marks, rather than, for example, inserting additional h's, as in English, which would eventually blend in with those required by the strict transcription.
For Tibetan, I used the strictest transliteration, indicating the pronunciation where necessary, since this language suffers from the same problem as English: a tremendous gap between spelling and pronunciation.
For Chinese, I used pinyin, which is now the most common Latin transcription, except for the word tao , which should be written dao . It seemed funny to me to write dao and talk about Taoism (Daoism?).
For Greek, the text does not contain any words with ambiguous transliterations.
For Japanese I have adopted the most common transcription, without quantity signs on the vowels.
For Hebrew, the transcription is purely phonetic (it gives the pronunciation).
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