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is truth?" He replied, "Truth is that which can be used." The definition of truth is that which can be used. Science will define truth in the same way. Its definition will be pragmatic: Truth is that which can be made use of in life and which can be demonstrated.
If it is said that when hydrogen and oxygen are mixed, water is created, we don't care whether that statement is true or not; if we can see that water is made from mixing hydrogen and oxygen, it is true, otherwise not. The statement in itself has no validity, its validity is its utility. If it is possible to create water that way, it has to be proved by actual demonstration. Now science has adopted this definition of truth which religion accepted five thousand years ago. In religion utility was the test to verify a truth.
The mantra "Aum," has no meaning but it has utility; a temple has no meaning but it has utility. To make use of it is an art, and there is an inherent flow in all the arts which cannot be taught, but must be absorbed.
I have read that there was an emperor in China fifteen hundred years ago, who was very fond of meat -- so much so that he would have a cow or bull slaughtered right before his eyes. The same butcher slaughtered cattle in front of him regularly every morning for fifteen years. One day the emperor asked, "I haven't seen you sharpening your axe once in fifteen years. Doesn't its edge become blunt?"
The butcher replied, "No, Your Majesty, it doesn't. The edge becomes blunt only when the butcher is not an expert, if he does not know where to strike. The butcher must know where there are bones and joints, and then the axe can cut the animal in two with one blow. This art of cutting is passed on from one generation to the next. So not only does the edge not become blunt, it becomes sharper daily, with every fresh stroke."
The emperor asked the butcher to teach him the art.
The butcher replied, "It would be very difficult to. I have not learnt this art but imbibed it from watching my father since my early childhood. It wasn't taught to me, I absorbed the art through watching my father every day. Sometimes I would fetch the axe for him,
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