9. Humans And Their Fantasies

Although not being philosophers to talk about ‘nothingness’ and ‘being’, our Vietnamese children, in their childhood, know how to play this cheating game.

I remember when I was little and able to count one, two, three or something, we already knew how to play this game. We held a small pebble in one of our hands, rotated them a few times, and asked our partner which hand the pebble was in. The partner chose one hand and we opened it. The probability of winning is 50%. There was a mischievous child who didn’t hold a pebble, but asked which hand had it and which didn’t. The opponent was sure to lose because the guess was always wrong.

When you grow up, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ are no longer a child’s joke but a serious core issue of human life.

If life is an illusion or a dream, then there is nothing to say. But if it is real, how should we live?

1. IS THIS WORLD REAL OR UNREAL? PHENOMENA AND TRUTH.

No one considers the outside world to be just an illusion when facing stomach-gnawing hunger, when enduring the biting cold. Only when we are too idle, too wealthy, do we discuss faraway matters. There is a Latin proverb, “primum manducare deinde philosophari,” meaning “eat first, philosophy later”.

Thus, reality is only a product of thought and rationality. Unfortunately, as humans, everyone must think, as Blaise Pascal said, “Human beings are reeds that can think.” If we take away our thinking mind, then man is just a plant like a reed.

Reasoning is the way for our reason to find truth. Events are experienced through our limited senses, then based on those experiences we search for the truth of things. Reason is just one path, not necessarily the most reliable, to find the truth. Humans make a big mistake and think that only reason can reach the truth.

Scientific products are the result of human reason: from observing, hypothesizing, verifying, finding laws and conclusions, resulting in objective, systematic scientific knowledge.

Even though there is a strict process and solid verification, a lot of scientific knowledge is seriously wrong. This error is not due to carelessness, but it comes from the imperfection and limitation of reason itself.

We can conclude: Scientific knowledge is only relative, can only describe phenomena, and the truth of things is a matter for discussion.

Is there any other way than reason to see the truth of things?

2. MEDITATION: ANOTHER WAY TO FIND THE TRUTH.

Different from using reason to understand things, which considers things as objects of research. When we look at a flower, we are the subject and the flower is an object distinct from us. That is dualism. We are observers and can use all available technical means to understand phenomena. Objective factors prevail. This is the principle of Western science.

Zen is different. According to Zen, to fully understand things, you must immerse yourself in them. To do that, one must concentrate one’s thoughts, eliminate all distracting thoughts, create space and conditions for the mind to sublimate, and shine clearly on things to grasp the essence of what is hidden inside. This is uniformity. Subjective factors prevail. This is also the principle of Eastern philosophy.

Christian Zen masters have known how to apply meditation since ancient times. Because they were hermits, few people knew about it. Saint John the Baptist is a typical example. He lived modestly in the desolate desert, wearing camel clothes and eating locusts and wild honey.

Anatasius, bishop of Alexandria (293/298-373), wrote about Saint Anthony (250-356) who gathered thousands of monks to live a contemplative life, “He went alone into the desert, taking refuge in a rock hole. Every six months he went to get food once. He stayed alone like that for many years to practice self-denial.”

The purpose of meditation is to get rid of delusions, illusions, errors of bias, and the limitations of rational language to contemplate and come to God as the purest being.

In my opinion, both external and internal methods, or a combination of both, as briefly presented above, cannot reach the truth of things. Simply because God did not design us to have that ability. The Bible tells us that God is omniscient. We are created only in His image.

3. METAPHYSICS IN THE BIBLE

• Absolute Being:

The absolute reality of Taoism is Dao, which is a wonderful, metaphysical and unthinkable principle, a boundless, immutable being, without beginning or end, that existed before the creation of heaven and earth. This being, from which the universe was formed, cannot be identified by language.

Suchness (Tathata in Sanskrit) is the concept of absolute reality in Buddhism. Suchness is the ultimate absolute nature of all things. It is constant, beyond all our cognitive reasoning, and is the unchanging truth of all phenomena.

Absolute reality of Confucianism: Confucius believed that an absolute Tai Chi exists, but because that principle is too sublime; Human intelligence is not capable of achieving it, so we only consider how it works, which is the I Ching theory.

In the Old Testament, when Moses was tending sheep on the mountain, he saw a fire burning in a bush and heard a voice saying, “Do not come near! Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. … Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” (Exodus 3:5-6). Moses asked the Lord who He was, so that he could tell the Jews. The Lord answered him: “I am who I am.” (Exodus 3:14) In another place the Lord said, “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20)

Thus, God is the eternal reality, the real existence.

It follows that God is absolute reality. We know the presence of this reality, but what it is like is unknown.

Actually, humans are not designed to understand what the absolute is like. Therefore, we need divine revelation to understand what God is and we can only understand Him when He reveals Himself, as Jesus said, “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him” (Mt 11:27).

In general, religions from East to West consider this universe to exist and the ultimate entity, from which all visible things are born, to be absolute and unthinkable.

• Invisible beings

As stated above, religions and thinkers must accept that humans cannot use their intellect to know God, they only know that He exists. If so, we must accept the knowledge called revelation, which is knowledge revealed by God Himself. The Bible, inspired by God, is that kind of knowledge.

What does the Bible say about invisible beings? Angels and demons.

– Angels

They are invisible creatures created by God. That means there was a time when they didn’t exist.

Angels were created to worship (Mt 18:10), (Heb 1,4-11), serve God (Mt 4:11), (Lk 22,43). The Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, mention many appearances of angels, with specific names and ranks, such as Michael, Gabriel, Raphael … who are archangels and other angels …

– Demons

Demons are rebellious angels who oppose God and have an evil nature.

Although invisible, they are real. From the beginning of history, in the Garden of Eden, they appeared and followed us until we closed our eyes. Their purpose is to distance us from God because they are jealous of God’s compassion for people. Their nature is bad and evil, as Jesus said, “When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

• Tangible entities

– Humans:

“Humans are spiritual among all other things” means that humans are nobler than all creatures because they can think, have conscience, and have freedom. Animals only live by instinct, while the universe, the moon, clouds, water, although large, have simple structures.

The Book of Genesis recounts that after creating the universe and everything and seeing that everything was good, God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth” (Gen 1:26). God created visible materialistic human beings and at the same time gave them authority to control and manage all things. “According to the image of God” means humans have a spirit, thoughts, freedom and will. In the New Testament, Jesus also told his disciples, “You are worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12:7).

– All other things

From light, to stars, birds in the sky, fish in the sea and everything that exists in the universe, there is nothing that God did not create in the first 6 days. We don’t think of 6 days as 24 hours x 6. In fact, as Saint Peter said in his second letter, chapter 3, verse 8, “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years.”

The universe and all visible things we see are real. Although it changes in a variety of ways, sometimes it is vapor, sometimes liquid, solid, sometimes it turns into energy, and many times our eyes cannot see it. They are not lost but exist in some form. Appearance and senses deceive us.

According to Buddhism, there is birth and there is death. The universe had a beginning and must have an end. Matter that has a beginning will at some point disappear. The book Ecclesiastes writes, “Vanity of vanities! …  All things are vanity!” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

Humans have the spiritual part, the soul, that exists not according to the physical laws of the body.

Max Planck, the teacher of Albert Einstein, the father of quantum theory, who won the 1918 Nobel said, “We know that matter is made up of atoms, which consist of electrons orbiting the nucleus. This nucleus is only the size of a grain of sand compared to the earth, which is the distance the electrons orbit. This means everything is empty. The matter we see is just an illusion, it is there and then it is not there, like the foam of ocean waves. Plants and trees exist today and are gone tomorrow.

Indeed, Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “What is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Conclusion

2, 3 decades ago, at most 70, 80 years ago, none of us were in this world. We are only nothing. The devil misleads us, planting nihilism in our hearts that life is just nothing. Everything is impermanent empty forms. So let us enjoy endless peasures and why not!

With the faith of a religious person, our life is a sincere ‘thank you’ to God, who gave us form and pulled us out of nothingness. When we fall into the path of sin, leading to death, He offers salvation with His precious blood and promises us to participate in the divine life, if we know how to choose Him as our inheritance. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (John 3:36).