We live inside the childhood belief that things exist on their side, by themselves, ‘over there.’ And we believe this is so, whether the ‘thing’ is a table, a tree, a person, or a thought. To the observer-self, they are all at the other end of a subject-object structure. And, as adults we continue to use words on the basis of this childhood belief.
Part of this process is the belief that words are names given to the objects in the world. We act as though the objects are there to be experienced and we just apply pre-given labels to them. The drawback with this is that, we don’t language our situations freshly. We tend to see old kinds in each fresh occurring.
Another part of the process is the role the observing self plays in this. I’ve spoken before about a special case of this called, by Tarthang Tulku, the ‘by-stander’ self. The by-standing self applies all the categories, does the ‘kind-making,’ according to its conditioning.
We are insulated, further, from self-discovery by a belief about language, which the by-stander self applies; which is, that we use words to communicate – as though that’s all they do. This communication theory is based on the idea that we are separate, and that words do something about the gap between us.
We have another defence, which helps to keep the system stable (and unexamined), and that is: regarding the trance which language helps keep in place – this subject-object dualism, which we have mistaken for reality – when we do get to think about it, or study it, we blame the trance on language. Humans have an odd way of blaming the ‘other’ in all kinds of circumstances, because they refuse to take responsibility for contributing to the problem.
Why would we do this? Well, perhaps one reason is that the game has gone so far, now, so that it is very scary to realise that we may be playing such a game. We’ve become so entranced – in exactly the way Narcissus did – with the dream of ‘self-existing self,’ that it looks like giving it up would be suicide. However, the situation is the opposite: our trance has bestowed a false meaning on the word ‘death,’ so while we are in the trance, we are as if dead.
To test my idea about the fear, consider this one small passage from Walshe’s translation of the Samiddhi Sutta in the Samyutta Nikāya. Sit with it, line by line. Pause after each line, checking to see how it is in there in the middle of your body. “I’m all okay in here, am I, with this?” Invite the felt-sense in the middle there. (If you take each line one at a time, your body will track the meaning, so you won’t have to keep the thread in mind.)
Those who go by names and concepts,
who abide in names and concepts,
by not discerning the naming-process,
they are under the yoke of death.
Having fully understood the naming-process,
one doesn’t conceive of one who names.
For, there is nothing
whereof one would say that ‘she’ or ‘he’ exists.
– Translated by Christopher J. Ash.
In this seemingly innocuous case of blaming the ‘other,’ I hear people say: “Language brings the subject-object division.” Or: “Language gives a sense of ‘thing-ness.” As if language acted on its own. Maybe the servant has taken over the master? Maybe that’s why we have so many zombie movies? And robot movies? Because we’ve given away our power to an idea that language acts on its own?
But, what if, instead we think of language as a gesture? Something new we do freshly in each situation, to carry the situation forward? What if we use the word ‘gesture’ to mean something very, very broad, here – and very alive, very present? For my purposes, right here, I say that this gesture of speech, which I give you now, is a manner of carrying my life forward, in a holistic way. How else would I want to live, if these were my last months?
The life of this person is not separate to your life. In carrying my life forward, I am carrying us all; just as you may carry us all forward, in reading and taking this in with your whole bodily comportment. Here, the words take on new depth. ‘Comportment’ now means, not something that you do with a possession, your body-as-thing; but it’s, rather, the way that your bodily intelligence responds as a felt whole.
Think of Bāhiya. The Nikāya Buddha carries forward the situation by offering the gesture of instruction. Bāhiya responds with the felt totality of his being. He became the master of his own mind, stepped out of the conceiving mode – and that mind was instantaneously free of the subject-object infatuation, released.