Searching for Truth - Francisco Mora

Aporia. Definition: truth, according to ancient Chinese wisdom.


“So what’s the purpose of writing if not searching for truth?” I said to him.

The Chinese wise man was sitting on a little stool by an oak tree playing a rigged-up cello-looking stringed instrument. Not at all rich like a cello, two strings are all it had. But he was making music out of it, Chinese sounding twangy sort of music. It sounded like a happy deep-throated kitty singing in Cantonese. Stop and listen to that in your head for a moment.

“There’s only one purpose to narrative,” he said.

Yes, my body language said. Yes?

“The purpose is to tell stories. That is all.”

A little let down, I guess is how I looked, because he went on about truth, truth with a capital t. But first he said: “The monkey in search of truth.” He laughed. I saw his ratty teeth. Babbler.

“Did Pol Pot in Cambodia not believe in truth when he killed one million because they wore glasses and looked like the bourgeoisie, the opposite of his Marxist truth. And the Christian church? How many were burned and otherwise exterminated for truth.”

He continued to prattle as he rattled the two strings. He said, “but no, the church was right about the perils of moral relativism. There is absolute truth.” Turning away from me puling on the bow to make me eager to hear what this was, I guess, and I was.

“It’s in you.”

“Me?”

“Everyone. Absolute truth is that dimension of awareness beyond thought and forms, that interstitial space between thought and form. Being, in other words.”

Quizzical. Quixotic.

“It’s the Christ in you. Or your inner Buddha nature. It’s there available to the one who watches his reflection in the water, it’s there when he sees he’s the one looking back at his reflection and stops believing or being only the reflection.”

“I think I get it,” I said. “When I’m aware of my ego, my wants and desires, and I’m not that, then I’m pure Being. And that is absolute truth?”

Nothing came from him. I said, “so what? What am I supposed to do with that? I’m. We. The world is created by thought, form, ego. I can’t be in La-la land of truth all day long, can I?”

The string instrument started sounding like an avenging cat, something that couldn’t, shouldn’t be called music.

He said, “tell stories, but that is all. Don’t mistake the finger pointing to the moon as the moon.”

Whatever.