SPEAKING ABOUT SPEAKING ABOUT IT
He who says he knows the Tao does not know it. He who knows the Tao does not say so. There is a human experience that defies communication, where attempting to speak about it is taboo or at the very least is discouraged. This is because it ends in mumbo-jumbo. Talking about it is successful only when it is done obliquely. For instance, it cannot be said what the Tao is, only what it is like. The Tao is like gravity.
Vedantists have the same difficulty when it comes to the Brahman, which they term the "Ground of All Being." The "Ground of All Being" is insufficient, though, because it belittles the immensity of the Brahman. Ultimately Vedantists sum up the Brahman with the phrase "neti, neti" (not this, not that).
Buddhists, by contrast, are spared this. They have no place for the "supernatural," as argued by the Buddha in his early sermon On the Nonexistence of the Soul. Agnostics is how Buddhists are described generally, because their concern is human suffering here and now and how it can be eliminated, rather than the existence of anything supreme.
Zen Buddhism is a different kettle of fish. A Zen master will insist that there is not even a Way, that he or she has nothing to teach. What follows then is a tug of war between the student and the master, the former still seeking Truth, the latter still shrugging that there is no Truth, until finally the intellect and will of the student collapses. This leaves only consciousness, which like the Tao and the Brahman is also beyond communication.
Yet there is a larger issue here: the inadequacy of language. Words are symbols which stand for something other than themselves. What we want to communicate, therefore, is once removed from our means of doing so. Why do we even try then, when the odds of miscommunication are so great? As social creatures we cannot avoid it, and on a day-to-day basis we seem to get by all right. This is to say, our everyday language is close enough; it works well enough.
On deeper matters, however, the Taoist indirect approach seems the best. Poetry, for example, is for expressing what cannot otherwise be expressed, hence such poets of Taoism as Li Bai. Images in paintings, sculpture, and photographs accomplish the same thing. Zen is renowned for it images. There are ways, in short, of speaking about it without speaking about it, even as I speak about it here.
Vedantists have the same difficulty when it comes to the Brahman, which they term the "Ground of All Being." The "Ground of All Being" is insufficient, though, because it belittles the immensity of the Brahman. Ultimately Vedantists sum up the Brahman with the phrase "neti, neti" (not this, not that).
Buddhists, by contrast, are spared this. They have no place for the "supernatural," as argued by the Buddha in his early sermon On the Nonexistence of the Soul. Agnostics is how Buddhists are described generally, because their concern is human suffering here and now and how it can be eliminated, rather than the existence of anything supreme.
Zen Buddhism is a different kettle of fish. A Zen master will insist that there is not even a Way, that he or she has nothing to teach. What follows then is a tug of war between the student and the master, the former still seeking Truth, the latter still shrugging that there is no Truth, until finally the intellect and will of the student collapses. This leaves only consciousness, which like the Tao and the Brahman is also beyond communication.
Yet there is a larger issue here: the inadequacy of language. Words are symbols which stand for something other than themselves. What we want to communicate, therefore, is once removed from our means of doing so. Why do we even try then, when the odds of miscommunication are so great? As social creatures we cannot avoid it, and on a day-to-day basis we seem to get by all right. This is to say, our everyday language is close enough; it works well enough.
On deeper matters, however, the Taoist indirect approach seems the best. Poetry, for example, is for expressing what cannot otherwise be expressed, hence such poets of Taoism as Li Bai. Images in paintings, sculpture, and photographs accomplish the same thing. Zen is renowned for it images. There are ways, in short, of speaking about it without speaking about it, even as I speak about it here.
posted by Donald L. Simons at
4:03 PM
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