Of Fish, Fingers, and the Problem with Words
“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?” —Zhuangzi, circa 4th Century BC
(my retelling of a classic Chinese parable)
There once was a wandering mystic who entered a village in remote China in the distant past. The people were bent, and lived out their days with eyes cast downward to the ground. They had never raised their sight beyond the horizon and knew nothing of the sky, the stars, or the heavens. The mystic, seeing this, sought to draw their minds towards the wonders of creation so he captured their attention and pointed upwards at the full moon.
The people were in awe, and paid reverence to this mystic, venerating him as one who had opened their minds to the truths of the universe..
The mystic wandered on, and did not return for many years. Finally, old and grey, his wanderings brought him again to this village. Eager to see how they had grown in their understanding of existence he entered with joy in his heart. However, his joy was immediately turned on end and his heart sank.
There in the center of the village square, carved in polished stone of the highest quality and adorned with garlands, was his finger pointing heavenwards. Around it the people prostrated themselves, eyes fixed on the finger. They sang hymns about the finger and the hand that bore it, and they burned incense and brought offerings of their finest produce to lay around the statue.
High above the villagers the clouds broke, and once again the full moon in all its beauty broke through. Rushing into their midst, the mystic desperately shook his bent, aged finger at the sky, pleading with the villagers to raise their eyes and see the wonder of creation.
The people of the village excitedly swarmed around him. Their esteemed prophet had returned! Embracing him they took the old man's hand in theirs and bestowed kisses upon it.
No eyes ever glanced skyward.
Withdrawing himself from their embraces, the villagers then witnessed that wrinkled hand perform a very different motion. The most defeated facepalm in the history of facepalms.
Despairing, they lamented, “We have not honored the old man and his holy finger as we should!” Eyes filled with tears, and remained fixed on the old man and the finger they had failed to honor.
Story Two
You are driving along the road, and see a young man sitting in front of a highway sign, lovingly gazing at it. “Grand Canyon, 20 miles” it reads.
“What are you doing?” you ask.
“The Grand Canyon is incredible, isn't it? I've always wanted to come here,” the awestruck young man replies and returns his gaze to the words on the sign in front of him.
Driving away you glance in your rear view. He remains, sitting fixed before the sign, basking in the glory of the Grand Canyon.
Another palm, another face.
Why Even Have Words?
Words are not reality. They are merely signs pointing down the road at a destination, fingers pointing at the moon. But so often we fall into the trap of lovingly embracing the hand, gazing at the road sign, and remaining ignorant of the wonders just beyond that those signs and fingers are meant to guide us towards. It is the age old problem of the symbol eclipsing the symbolized.
The realities of creation do not need to be defined in order to exist. An infant sees and understands the significance of its mother before it even has the vocabulary to say "mama." We, by ourselves do not need to affix words to objects, people, and ideas in order to understand them. Just like the baby, we see, sense, and subconsciously comprehend the world around us.
So why define anything? Why have symbols at all?
What if that baby needs to get its mother's attention among a crowd of other people? Suddenly the concept of mother needs to get outside that baby's own head and interact with other beings. "Mama," it screams, and she comes running.
We are not solitary creatures. Our concepts are not for us alone. As social beings we often need to point and say to our fellow beings "look here." It is how two minds transfer concepts between one another. Our posession of language is not for our benefit, but for those around us.
I promise this is all getting somewhere...I think.
Words, Concepts, and Cultures
A trap that many people fall into when encountering and trying to relate to people from vastly different cultures is to ask the question what is their word for “X.” The more important question is, do they have a concept of “X.”
For example, imagine you are an explorer hundreds of years ago. You are crossing the arctic and encounter an Inuit village. You are the first non Eskimo to cross paths with this culture, and this culture has had no experience of anything beyond its arctic world. You spend enough time with them to learn the rudiments of their language. One day you ask one of your new Inuit friends “What is the Inuit word for a giraffe?”
Do you see the problem?
The Eskimo who has never been beyond the arctic would have no concept of a giraffe, and thus would have no reason to have ever developed a linguistic signpost pointing at a concept that they do not posses.
A word presupposes the concept it symbolizes.
Western People Trying to Understand the Far East
Now, why am I going to all these lengths to discuss the role words hold and where they fall short? To illustrate that not every language has a word for everything that another language may have.
For example—and now we're getting to the meat and potatoes of what I want to discuss—when Western thinkers first encountered the philosophies of the Far East, a natural area of interest was religious belief. However, when the Western visitors attempted to inquire and understand Eastern thought, translate it's writings and bring them back to the West, they naturally did so using the vocabulary and conceptual inventory of their Judeo-Christian experience. How could they do otherwise?
This led to some significant errors of both understanding and translation.
For example, when first attempting to translate Eastern texts an important question was what was the word for God with a capital “G” in India or China. As we have seen this is already a mistake. They skipped the preparatory question of whether Eastern systems of cosmology even contained the concept of God with a capital “G”—God as a “Who.” God as an individual, sentient entity who exists outside of time and space...or for that matter resides atop Mount Olympus.
The answer, as it turns out, is no. Neither Hinduism nor Buddhism have such a concept! There is the concept of “Brahman” which is the Sanskrit as well as Hindi word which was initially, and often still today, translated as “God” with a capital “G” simply because it is the nearest approximation. Nearest approximation, not equivelant!
This was the West's first huge mistake and gave rise to significant errors in understanding Eastern thought because, as we will see, Eastern philosophies such as Hinduism and Buddhism do not have a concept, and thus do not have need for a word for an omnipotent, sentient entity who created and rules the universe (or who lives atop Mount Olympus and parties all the time).
Brahman does not refer to a sentient entity which is beyond creation. It is not a who, but a what. It, can be directly translated as “The Vastness,” the formless, all-encompassing, ultimate reality and substance of the universe.
It is the fabric from which all creation, including us, emanates. The great silent everything.
In typical fashion, Eastern minds define a concept not by saying what it is—again, to avoid the trap of where words fall short—but just like a sculptor chipping away at a block of marble, removing material until all that is left is the form being shaped—they rather define it by saying what it is not. Thus they attempt to lead us to an understanding of a concept that transcends language and vocabulary. Once we understand everything that something is not, then we posses an intuitive and non-syntactic understanding.
Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
We become the one who has no need for words any longer. We have captured the meaning!
Ancient Language and the Hindu Scriptures
Hinduism typically uses Sanskrit to discuss these things. Why? To not fall for the shortcomings of attempting to express ideas that are key to one culture in languages that evolved out of vastly different cultures and times in history which likely do not even have words for many of the things being discussed...again it would be like asking an Eskimo to discuss African wildlife using ancient Inuit vocabulary. Not possible. Now, teach that same Eskimo Swahili and suddenly he can go on and on about the topic.
So if I, as a native English speaker, build my understanding of Hinduism on English words, I will fall into inaccuracy and error. On the other hand, if I use Sanskrit terminology I have bypassed the failings of approximation and translation.
Furthermore, Sanskrit, like Latin in the West, is a dead language and is not warped by changing cultural trends. It is used for clarity and continuity due to the ancient nature of the texts involved. The foundational texts of Vedantic Hinduism, the Vedas, were composed as far back as 1,500 BC, prior to any of our modern languages taking shape. To put in perspective this is roughly the same time period that Jewish and Christian scholars believe the Pentatuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, was being put down in written form by Moses during the time the Hebrews were wandering in the desert.
From the Indus Valley to the Sinai Desert, here were these two great ancient cultures who never encountered each other, being geographically distant enough that at that time in history they might as well have been on different planets, both responding to the impulse to put down their oral traditions in written form for the first time, transmitting them to us today from that distant age. How can we hope to understand what they were telling us using our modern languages that have very little in common with those ancient thinkers?
Poetry cuts through the shortcomings of language
One unique quality of the Vedas is their heavily poetic structure. Then Yajur Veda (c. 800-1,200 BC), discusses the shortcomings of language to capture truth:
यतो वाचो निवर्तन्ते। अप्राप्य मनसा सह।
"Yato vāco nivartante, aprāpya manasā saha."
"Whence words return along with the mind, completely failing to reach It."
Poetry reaches our subconscious in a way that prose never can. It elicits emotions and stirs our subconscious—we sense the truth rather than defining it with cold prose. The Yajur Veda discusses how ultimate truth, or supreme consciousness, is transcendental. Because words and thoughts are limited tools created by human experience, they can point towards the divine but can never fully capture or encapsulate it. True realization must be experienced directly beyond language. Poetry, art, and music get us closer and closer to reality.
What is "Brahman" not?
The key phrase that is most often used to define Brahman in the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, which I tend to gravitate towards as it is nearest to my own experiences and ideas*, is “Desha Paricheda, Kala Paricheda, and Vastu Paricheda.”
Desha Paricheda: That which is not limited by location. I am in Alabama. If I am in Alabama I cannot also be in Bucharest. I am limited by location. Brahman is that which is not.
Kala Paricheda: That which is not limited by time. I am alive now. I was not alive in the fifteenth century. There was a time when I did not exist, and there will come a time when I stop to exist. I am limited by one location in time. I have a beginning and an end. Brahman is that which has no location in time and has no beginning and no end.
Vastu Paricheda: That which is not limited by object-ness. A pencil is a pencil, it is not also a cat. A pencil is limited by object. It can only be one thing at one time and is bound to its object-ness. Brahman is that which is not limited to being one object. This is the trickiest one to examine and I will try to make it clear in my next article...stay tuned.
Yes, these definitions could be reorganized into positive statements—"Brahman is omnipresent, eternal, and...well the object-ness thing is harder to express from that perspective." But, the point of this is to teach our mind to avoid getting hung up on assigning words and definitions to things: "X is blah, blah, blah." Lose the blah, look at what the thing is NOT, and let your subconscious sense comprehend without putting it into words. This is where true reality lies.
Again, words are simply symbols for reality. They are not actually reality. Getting caught up in a world of words, constantly needing to talk about and define everything around you means you are keeping reality at an arms length. Clutching the symbol, gazing at the finger, and never raising your eyes to the moon.
So, chisel away limitations of location, time, and object. What you're left with is Brahman.
*I wouldn't really say I am an Advaita Vedantin, but when I discovered and began studying Advaita Vedanta I found myself constantly nodding my head and saying “Aha, that's what I have found as well!” Eastern religions demand constant individual inquiry into the nature of the universe. Any belief is put to the test of “Does this match my personal experience?” So it is often said that when one becomes a Taoist for example, one is not accepting the beliefs of Taoism, rather one has simply discovered the name for the concept of reality that one already possessed based on one's inquiry and experience. Nothing about the believer changes, he or she simply learns a way to describe what he or she already felt and belived. Thus, the concept of “converting” to an Eastern religion is again, an error in understanding what Eastern religions are. Even the English word “Religion” doesn't quite fit. Most often Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., are more accurately labeled as Philosophies due to the abscence of the concept of "God" with a capital "G" and a "Who" divinity.
In Hinduism, and by extension Buddhism, Taoism, etc., the gods with a small “g” such as Vishnu or Shiva are metaphorical conceptions and personifications of aspects of Brahman—aspects of “The Vastness," the universay everything. They are not believed to be sentient entities in the way Western gods and goddesses in mythology are. But we humans need to illustrate reality in concrete terms and we love to personify concepts. Just like Brahman is not relatable to Western concepts of God, Allah, or Yahweh, Shiva, Vishnu, Kali, Krishna and the whole pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses are not relatable to gods and goddesses in Western polytheism. Zeus, Aphrodite, Odin, and all the others were believed to be entities who could walk the earth, had thoughts, volition, and judgment. Eastern gods and goddesses are a different concept entirely—they are personifications of elements of reality. To understand the Eastern pantheon you must understand that they are symbols—they are fingers pointing at the moon, not the moon itself.
Of course, like any other philosophy or religion, there are countless sects, schools, and fringe elements in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and the rest which hold a wide array of variations on the mainstream that often depart significantly from classical thought. So you will find some sects who do believe that “Lord Shiva”, for example, can take on physical form and walk into the room at any moment. But this is not the classical, mainstream sense.
Methods Vs. Dogma
Another aspect of Eastern “religions” that is often lost in translation is the fact that Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., are very non-dogmatic and do not see themselves as "The one and only way to heaven." They typically see their role as being methods for reaching liberation, not eternal ends in and of themselves. They are not exclusive clubs that demand single-minded loyalty.
Just like the fish trap, the rabbit snare, and words, they are a means to an end, a vehical to a destination. And once that end is reached they are no longer needed. You ride the ferry across the river, and once on the other side you do not drag the ferry across dry land. You leave it behind on the bank and proceed forwards. Religions are the same. They are vehicles, not destinations. At least so says the Eastern mind.
If you are trying to lose weight no one will criticize you for incorporating a number of different methods. You can diet, you can hit the gym, you can go for walks in the fresh air. Thus you will find Hindus and Buddhists who have a great devotion for Jesus, for example, because they see his words to be effective methods to get where they are heading. They see him as an enlightened being who is worth paying attention to, just like Buddha. And it is important to understand, Buddha is not divine. Buddha was a human being who realized his true nature "woke up" and began teaching his fellow human beings how he accomplished it—The name Buddha in fact means "He who awoke." Buddhists belive our purpose in life is to reach our own Buddhahood, simply to wake up. Thus, there are many Buddhas, and designating someone a Buddha (someone who has achieved enlightenment) is comparable to Christians classifying someone as a Saint (someone who has entered heaven).
When a Buddhist is meditating before a statue of a Buddha, they are essentially saying, "Hey man, I want to get to where you are. How'd you pull it off?"
And on the road to enlightenment there can be a lot of mixing and matching—remember, all these religions and schools of philosophy are methods for getting where we want to be, just like dieting and exercise are both methids for losing weight. I once was listening to a Hindu teacher and a student asked him, “What is the most powerful mantra for meditation?” His response was “The one that helps you get where you're going.” My methods are my paths, and they will not work for you even though we may be headed to the same destination.
Where are we going?
Whether you call it heaven, enlightenment, liberation, nirvana, Valhalla, etc., to an Eastern oriented mind, the methods to arrive there are like the slopes up a mountain with different sides and faces but only one ultimate peak. Pick any route that appeals to you; they all go the same direction! Some may get you there quicker than others. Some may be rocky and riddled with lava flows. Others may be grassy and full of butterflies, songbirds, and bubbling brooks. But as long as you're heading upwards you're on the right track.
I may be ascending the North face following the Advaitin path, you may be ascending the South face following the Christian path, and John Doe may be zigzagging and winding his way around all the faces following no path at all but simply wandering up through the woods. None of us can see the others so we all assume WE are the only one headed to the top and feel like calling out "Hey you heathens, come and join me on this route!" But imagine our surprise when we reach the summit and see random other climbers emerge from all sides to join us! How did they get here? They didn't follow the same route I did!
Well, that is all for today, I will continue this exploration in my next post.
Caveat: I call these "Musings and Ramblings" because that is what they are—just a guy talking through his thoughts and trying to figure out what he's trying to say. Please understand that these are simply my own mashup of understandings of these concepts based on my own experiences and inquiry. I am definitely not any kind of authority or scholar of Eastern philosophy nor a member of the cultures from which these ideas stem so my understanding comes through my own filters. Take what I say with a huge grain of salt and feel free to respond with thoughts of your own. I love thoughts. Thoughts are cool.
Until next time! Thanks for reading!
Comments