Andrius opens up to Renshin about Absolute Truth
Channel: Math 4 Wisdom
Date: 2023-05-23

Renshin Lee is an advisor helping with the Let Me Think Scholarship Workshop http://www.let-me-think.org in Oneonta, New York from June 4 to July 29.  I will be one of twenty participants.  We are working on alternative scholarly institutions of the future, including Math 4 Wisdom.  

Renshin is a great listener.  I told her about my relationship with truth, and especially, absolute truth.  Typically, I am listening to others talk about their relationships with truth, as you can see from our playlist, Landscape of Truth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhTHq9v5DkM&list=PL4jG0jj6NdI2KvNgfy_F13g5AshOGn8qU

I also shared with her the questions that I will be investigating.

What can awareness of the landscape of truth contribute to a network of investigatory communities?    
* What are the relationships that people have with truth?       
* What investigatory communities are there?        
* Who cares about absolute truth and why?

This is the first in a series of videos where I will be documenting what I learn before, during and after this Scholarship Workshop, both from my investigations and from my self growth.

0:00 Andrius talks about the Let Me Think Scholarship Workshop, and Math 4 Wisdom Outreach, and introduces Renshin Lee
2:45 MAPLE = Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth. Renshin has lived there for four years in Vermont. http://www.monasticacademy.com And before that, in the Rationalist community in the Bay Area. http://www.lesswrong.com
3:55 Andrius's Questions to Research.
8:15 Renshin: Why are some people drawn to absolute truth? Why is that rare? It requires a certain level of desperation. An internal drive to swat away every other distraction, which takes a lot of effort.
10:50 Andrius's experience organizing independent thinkers https://www.math4wisdom.com/wiki/Research/20170506PostTruth
13:30 Andrius engaging God as a child on his quest to know everything
14:55 Andrius being "functionally sane"
16:00 Appreciating Joshua Meyers allowing Andrius to stay longer in the US to do a M4W tour.  Andrius wanting to meet his fellow investigator John Harland in California and his foil Kirby Urner in Oregon
17:30 Clear leadership so that others can likewise act as leaders
18:20 Individual experience vs. group experience 
19:00 Visiting MAPLE in Vermont. They are looking for a network of wisdom focused investigatory communities based on principles compatible with Buddhism, open to non Buddhists.
20:30 The importance of absolute truth for Renshin and for Buddhism
22:00 The eightfold way. 
25:00 Renshin: Andrius is good at finding patterns needed for reality and patterns in Scripture. Is that what he means by absolute truth?
26:20 Andrius: Imagining God's point of view.
28:15 Renshin: What is the content of the absolute truth? Andrius: God does not have to be good.
30:00 God's will as love of the imperfect.
33:20 How Andrius came to the realization, after twenty years, that God does not have to be good, by studying the Gospel of John, Jesus's algebraic thinking
37:40 If we had a holy language, each person should have their own testimony and express it in that language
38:20 It would be a huge win to engage the Buddhist civilization based on absolute truth
39:10 Renshin appreciates Andrius delineating his personal, analytic, "thinky" path to truth
40:00 Renshin takes the other approach, mystical, clearing away the nontruth. Andrius: Is that basically the same method, focused on abstraction? Renshin: For me, it's focusing on the breath.
41:00 Andrius could try to take up some basic Buddhist practices for the sake of being able to translate understandings, and learn surprise things. The idea of going to MAPLE.
43:00 The idea of Phase 2, Math 4 Wisdom outreach, to find people who care about absolute truth, perhaps people on the margins.
46:30 Renshin's warning is that this path demands integrity because the mind can think literally any thought and most thoughts are not true thoughts. Need some connection to the truth. 
47:45 Understanding the limits of internal logical consistency, as with Godel's incompleteness theorem.
48:20 Andrius's understanding of his own deepest value, living by truth, and the scopes for truth.
50:15 Ideas that can be expressed in the language of absolute truth or not.
52:20 If I am devoted to truth, then the spirit will flow in me without a problem. That's not my problem.
54:30 Good as the way of committing to truth
56:45 Ending with a prayer. Renshin chants a Tibetan chant.

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Public Domain, 2023

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