Ultimate Fact & Ultimate Value

The principle of Open-Emptiness deals with ultimate facts,
while the principle of Inclusive-Transcendence deals with ultimate values.

The ultimate fact of matter is the ontological absence of inherent existence, which can be established inferentially by dialectical reason through analysis of dependent origination, as well as established as a direct perception through gnoseological wisdom. This absence of inherent existence is open-emptiness, which is to say, where there would be inherent existence (if inherent existence could be) is the lack of any determinate quality or essence — a space which is basically free of any categorical or conceptual proliferation. Since open-emptiness designates the mere lack of inherent existence, it does not exist inherently on its own. Thus even open-emptiness is open-empty.

The ultimate value or aim for becoming is communion with deity, where “deity” refers to that primordial potential for existence completely replete with all possible qualities and powers, which endows this deity with the capacity for omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipresence and omnipotence. Neither collapsing diversity into an identity nor preserving difference in union, consummated communion with deity is characterized by a dialogic of inclusive transcendence where the many become one and are increased by one, and this one realizes itself as a temporal actualization of that primordial potential. Because it is a real instantiation of the highest potential, this deity is considered to be divine or supra-mundane in nature and thus communion with it is the summum bonum of all values.

The ultimacy of open-emptiness and inclusive-transcendence is not an ultimacy of temporal finality, since every single moment has been, is being and will be constituted both by ultimate fact and ultimate value. The temporal procession of the universe is potentially indefinite because there is no fact that is not, in the final analysis, open-empty and there is no value that is not a partial or total aim towards inclusive transcendence; there is no being that is not, in essence, open-empty and no sentient being who is not, by nature, an inclusively transcendent deity in their own right.

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