I'm just going to share my understanding of Buddhism, or truth, without the typical vagueness people tend to write with when discussing these issues. I don't claim to have realized truth, but hopefully I'll be able to contribute to your ideas. So, first of all, one can't really know something certainly. Not only can it be a wrong expectation (how many times have you worried about something that never happened), wrong interpretation of the world around you, or maybe even the world as a whole. For all I know I'm in the matrix. Some people would think "probability." A lot of times people say "you can't be 100% sure, but you can be 99% sure." So I can say: I am 99% sure that the cat exists. But I don't really know the probability certainly either.I can be 99% sure that the statement "the cat has a 99% chance of being real" but not 100. So It goes on and on "I'm 99% sure that I'm 99% sure that the cat has a 99% chance of being real." In math you would multiply the probabilities out, and because it goes on forever, you get .99*.99*.99*.99..... and end up getting 0, 0% certainty. So you really don't know at all.

Here's another way to look at it. Many people make the assumption that what one observes through the senses is “reality,” but what is their evidence that they do. The only evidence you can have is more sensory stuff, so it’s a circular argument. It doesn’t mean a thing. Same thing with reason. Reason seems to make sense, but what are you examining reason with? REASON, so even if you determine that reason works, it’s just circular reasoning. In fact, all of that up there is reasoning. But okay, so I can just throw all that out the window. I don’t know anything, I think. Is that right? Well I don’t know that either. I can’t say “It is impossible to know anything” because then I would know that.  So I end up with just a transcendental unknowing, a letting go of sorts… (I’m not there yet, philosophically I got it, but I have not realized it in my own mind)

Now the whole desire suffering thing makes sense, but once you forget about reason, its pretty much meaningless. However, when you realize that you have no Idea what’s going on, you’re not going to desire anything. So the Buddha was probably just trying to take that truth, and package it in reason, and help people out with it who weren’t ready for the unknowing thing yet.

No mind is letting go of your individual identity,  after all: you don’t know who you are. (unknowing) Its also kind of a state you reach in meditation. I don’t really know, but “big mind”, “empty mind” and “no mind” accurately describe what it is.  You don’t really understand it, its not an idea, its almost like a feeling.

Duality is just us picking and choosing, picking things out in the “world” (if it exists as many think it does),  (unknowing) and calling them something, deciding if they're good or bad.... Its a delusion because you don't know if they are good or bad.

Another way of thinking about this whole thing is that society gives you your ideas, so depending on what society you’re born into, you could think completely different things when it comes to right and wrong, what the world is like… So how can you get to any truth? Well certainly you can’t just assume that you’re societies ideas are right, after you have truly realized this, so you let go. You let go of the picking and choosing (of the “this is right with my life, this is wrong with it”)  and that’s basically letting go of desire and realizing unknowing.

So that’s basically it. Unknowing is the fundamental concept. Tell me if you have anything to contribute.

(Ideas, or ways of expressing the ideas)

reality is real.

and truth comes in the form...........you should know better.

its a feeling. i shouldnt have done that.

you KNOW better.