397. Paradoxical Truth

As our awareness expands, our understanding of truth changes. We begin to realize that we cannot talk about truth without also invoking paradox. We see that the subject passes into the object, the permanent passes into the impermanent, the multiple passes into the one, and so on. Even the feasibility of meaningful distinction between entities seems threatened by paradox, and we start to question our ability to denote truth.

What we eventually discover is that we can only talk about truth within the conventional world constructed by human beings. Within this system, what is true is entirely dependent on the conventions we use. Language, which is at the heart of this conventional world, cannot directly reach truths that lie outside of that world. But language — not merely as words and grammar but as all normative convention — is our only means of communicating with others.

The consequence is that our ability to share truth is limited to the normative structures that we share. But we also know that these normative structures can be used to indicate something beyond them through metaphor. This is what all art does, and we can see this most clearly in poetry, where words become a means towards a beauty that transcends language. The presence of paradox should not dissuade us from trying to use language to express ultimate truths, but we must accept any such attempt will always bring paradox with it.

A further implication is that contradiction does not mean ultimate falsehood, but merely a problem within our system of conventions. That contradictions arise when we try to talk about ultimate truth is only a consequence of using the tools of language to do something they are strictly not able to do. Contradictions are not points of failure but rather evidence of paradoxical truths breaking through our human-constructed system. It is by accepting paradox that we also learn how to get free of language and allow ourselves to respond more immediately to what we intuitively see.