A claim is a statement that is either true or false. Truth is the property of a claim—or a set of claims—that adequately corresponds to the way things actually are. When a claim aligns with reality, you have truth; when it does not match reality, you have falsehood.
When a Buddhist author writes, “Dharma practice is not about being right or wrong,” you have to wonder where he’s coming from. All eight factors of the Eightfold Path begin with the word “right”, and there are numerous discourses in the Pali Canon explaining “wrong” versions of those same factors.
Clearly, the author is not philosophically inclined. For by claiming that the practice of Dharma is not about being right or wrong, he is unwittingly asserting that he is “right” about that point. In doing so, he makes a truth claim—that Dharma practice is not about right or wrong.
Later, he devotes a whole chapter to “Letting Go of Truth.” Yet if he truly understood what truth is, he would realize that he is arguing we should let go of claims that match reality. All the while he continually makes claims that he thinks match reality.
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