21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S

carve up the world in ways that are not always helpful. Very big questions therefore are suspect. They are asked with the assumption that there could be a clear meaning to the question and a straightforward answer that could be understood. But unfortunately the world is not like this. The way language splits the world is a false split, as previously described. There can only be one universe — by definition — and therefore, even at this level, any divisions in the universe are just our descriptions — our way of seeing the world.

There is one really fundamental question and that is:- ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ (It was apparently Leibniz who first raised this as a philosophical concern — there has to be a ‘sufficient reason’ for something to be. The answer he gave to his own question was that essence is always striving for existence.) Is this question at least immune from the concerns raised above? I would have to say, no, it’s not! Even the difference between something and nothing is a false split. In fact, asking the question itself is problematic, as it puts ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ on an equal par. By treating ‘nothing’ as a noun, we thereby give it substance and make it more difficult to understand.

Buddhism has a way of speaking about ultimate reality, in that all statements must be qualified by three others. So if we say: ‘the universe exists’, we make a split in the universe by suggesting that all non-existent things do not belong to it. Hence, we need to qualify our statement by also saying: ‘the universe does not exist’, ‘the universe both exists and does not

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