multiple ultimates

@dholmes I really don't like the word "ultimate," but I think we are stuck with it.  Or at least I am, because all my theological and philosophical friends use it.  But I really don't think the idea behind it is all that difficult to understand or put into words.  For example, as a Buddhist, you think "karma" is ultimate in the sense that it's always at work.  It then becomes something you want to keep in mind as you travel through life.  I myself think that something like 'creativity in the moment' is ultimate, as something that goes with most understandings of karma, insofar as the latter leave space for freedom to respond to karmic influences and thus create new (sometimes positive) karma.  On these matters, words can help.  Other kinds of ultimates - e.g. the inter-becoming of all things, or the great Compassion, or the uniquenes of each sentient being as an expression of the Buddha-nature - can likewise be indicated by language, even as the reality at hand is always more than the words.  The problem is that the very word "ultimate" can become an object of fixation, along with the need to "find" it (or them).  I wish we didn't have it.  On this, I've learned a lot from our friend, and fellow member of this network, who once proposed to me that the word "ultimate" is not that helpful in understanding healthy religion or, for that matter, even God.  It makes everything a 'thing,' even if an ineffable thing.  So, on some mornings at least, I try to be ultimate-free.  On other mornings, I like to think there are as many ultimates as there are sentient beings, that all are momentary (dharma like) and that many are very, very precious, regardless of their finitude.  In an essay in Open Horizons I speak of the present moment as one kind of ultimate - and there are really so many of them, and counting.