I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that said something like, "seek the deepest truth, but respect the delusion." What I got from it was seeking truth is a personal journey, as we describe here, which will take us from mainstream ideas which are often delusional. If we confront the mainstream delusion we are likely to be marginalized for it, so it is better to leave the herd in their delusions, while focusing upon, and living, the truth of leading a fruitful and righteous lifestyle.
Truth is a term used to indicate various forms of accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. Derived from Old English tríewþ, tréowþ, trýwþ, Middle English trewþe, cognate to Old High German triuwida, Old Norse tryggð; both it and true can indicate "having good faith or Loyalty. The opposite of truth is falsehood, which, correspondingly, can also take on logical, factual, or ethical meanings. Language and words are a means by which humans convey information to one another in semiotic associations, and the method used to recognize a "truth" is termed a criterion of truth. There are differing claims as to what constitutes truth, what things are truthbearers capable of being true or false, how to define and identify truth, the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play, and whether truth is subjective or objective, relative or absolute.
A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.
Righteousness (also called rectitude) is a theological concept in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. It is an attribute that implies that a person's actions are justified, and can have the connotation that the person has been "judged" or "reckoned" as leading a life that is pleasing to God.
William Tyndale (Bible translator into English in 1526) remodelled the word after an earlier word rihtwis, which would have yielded modern English *rightwise or *rightways. He used it to translate the Hebrew root צדקים (TzDYQ), tzedek, which appears more than five hundred times in the Hebrew Bible, and the Greek word δίκαιος (dikaios), which appears more than two hundred times in the New Testament.
Dharma ([dʱəɾmə]; Sanskrit: धर्म dharma, About this sound listen (help·info); Pali: धम्म dhamma; Tamil: அறம் Aram) is a key concept with multiple meanings in the Indian religions Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism.[8] There is no single word translation for dharma in western languages.[9]
In Hinduism, dharma signifies behaviors that are considered to be in accord with rta, the order that makes life and universe possible,[10][note 1] and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and ‘‘right way of living’’.[7] In Buddhism dharma means "cosmic law and order",[10] but is also applied to the teachings of the Buddha.[10] In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for "phenomena".[11][note 2] In Jainism dharma refers to the teachings of the Jinas[10] and the body of doctrine pertaining to the purification and moral transformation of human beings. For Sikhs, the word dharm means the "path of righteousness".
The Classical Sanskrit noun dharma is a derivation from the root dhṛ, which has a meaning of "to hold, maintain, keep".[note 3] The word "dharma" was already in use in the historical Vedic religion, and its meaning and conceptual scope has evolved over several millennia.[12] The antonym of dharma is adharma.
