Cer­tain things, by their very nature, are not open to debate. It is not worth open­ing a debate over tran­si­ence and life, over beauty and ugli­ness, over truth and false­hood. Not because it is unim­port­ant to cla­ri­fy them, but because of the diversity of opin­ions.

For end­less is the dif­fer­ence of views, and no single view foun­ded on argu­ment is decis­ive. (Narada: Bhakti Sut­ras 75.)

The first set of ques­tions not to be debated is the pair of tran­si­ence and life. These are eschat­o­lo­gic­al ques­tions, con­cern­ing the ulti­mate facts of exist­ence, and to dis­pute the exist­ence of facts is folly, while ideas may well be exchanged about how they exist. The wise were expec­ted to form a per­son­al opin­ion, and no one was really coun­ted wise until he had one of his own. Truth is one, and the wise explain it in many ways – so runs the maxim of the Veda. Diversity, then, or one­ness of essence? This is a mat­ter of etern­al debate, but so long as the object of inquiry is one and the same, and the sub­ject of inquiry is sin­cere, the diversity of opin­ions has its right to exist. Of course, it is only the pos­it­ive affirm­a­tion of exist­ence that makes the fact of passing away real: if there is no exist­ence, there is no passing away either. Her­ac­litus says that death is – birth. The two poles can be tran­scen­ded in a high­er syn­thes­is, when we view the phase trans­itions in the light of etern­ity, and do not go blind star­ing into the etern­al gloom of non-exist­ence.

Beauty and ugli­ness are the next pair not to be debated. Beauty is all too sub­ject­ive… and ugli­ness no less so. Though beauty is doubt­less to be found in the world, it still depends on the behold­er's point of view and the con­di­tion­ing of his con­scious­ness, just as the judging of ugli­ness does. To the mouse, the cat will never be beau­ti­ful. The beau­ti­ful is pleas­ing, the ugly repel­lent, which is to say that these aes­thet­ic factors stir an emo­tion­al response in us. And there is no arguing over emo­tions. Moreover, there are two fur­ther forces that dis­tort the pic­ture: love and hatred. The lov­ing moth­er rightly says that even her sight­less child has eyes like stars… Love can carve some­thing lovely even out of the ugly, while hatred makes even beauty look ugly. If both love and hatred dis­tort, then it is bet­ter to choose the dis­tor­tion of vis­ion that rests on love, for it makes real­ity more beau­ti­ful, while the other dis­torts by devalu­ing. Beauty is the con­cern not only of philo­soph­ic­al aes­thet­ics – which, let us admit, is the pre­serve of the few – but also of art, which speaks to the many. And art is noth­ing other than the praise of beauty, or the suf­fer­ing its absence brings, and this is a lan­guage every­one speaks.

The third pair of oppos­ites is truth and false­hood, which is like­wise an exceed­ingly rel­at­ive theme. There are many truths with a small t, and per­haps even more false­hoods. The petty man runs from truth, which asks much, just as he runs from vil­lainy, which also demands much, and he is cap­able only of little pranks. Truth is best examined in the triad of facts, truth and real­ity. Of facts there are a great many, and with suit­ably selec­ted facts any­thing can be proved. Truth is a worldly mat­ter, and though it doubt­less car­ries a moral charge, it is still fun­da­ment­ally rel­at­ive: who­ever is a nation­al hero on one side of the war­ring parties is an inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ist on the other. Real­ity, how­ever, let us regard as a meta­phys­ic­al concept, in whose light we also see truth and facts more clearly.

If not on argu­ment, then on what shall we found our inquiry? Moral neut­ral­ity would be spir­itu­al pro­vin­cial­ism, and blur­ring the dif­fer­ence between good and evil is not the same as the mys­tic­al exper­i­ence of unity. Neut­ral­ity is the agony of won­der and the death of rap­ture. Bey­ond argu­ment we need won­der, bey­ond human opin­ions the self-rev­el­a­tion of the super­hu­man Real­ity. Worldly beauty is only con­ven­tion, but abso­lute beauty is the meas­ure. Who­ever explores life, beauty and truth, let them do so with love!