Tag: language use

Fresh Language-ing

On July 25, 2016

In Enquiry, Practices, Time, Space, & Knowledge

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 polarity.

This separation underlies the categories that we have built up, and that we use to know what ‘kind’ of something we are encountering. The ‘subject’ end of the polarity (the observer-self) positions itself in relation to situations this way. As adults, our word-use continues based on these childhood foundations.

We apply pre-given labels to the objects in the world, and so tend to see the old categories in place of each fresh occurring. We usually don’t pause to learn how to language our situations freshly.

Let’s take another angle on the role which the ‘observing self’ plays in this. There’s a special angle on this ‘positioning’ process, which is called, by Tarthang Tulku, the ‘by-stander self.’ It’s an interesting term, because it brings in the fact that this false way of experiencing our sentient processes (false ego) treats itself as though it is outside the stream of experience; falsely timeless or eternal.

(I can’t go into the implications of this right now, but they are profound. For instance, this view helps us understand why people, before they act, can’t feel into the consequences that will flow from their actions; and why they don’t accept responsibility, once those consequences become obvious after they’ve acted.)

The ‘by-standing self’ applies all kinds of categories in its ‘kind-making,’ according to its history and conditioning. We are insulated from self-awareness of this deluding process by a belief about language, which the by-stander self applies; that is, that we use words to communicate between the subject and the object, and about the subject and object.

This communication theory is based on the idea that we are separate, and that words do something about the gap between the subject and the object. But, this supposed function of language is based on the false or dualistic ‘separation’ viewpoint.

There is a defence, which helps to keep the system stable and unexamined, and that is: When we do come to think about subject-object trance (perhaps prompted by teachings), we then blame the trance on language itself – as though the dualism is inherent in speaking and thinking.

Humans have an odd way of blaming the ‘other’ in all kinds of circumstances. In this seemingly innocuous case of blaming the ‘other,’ I hear even dharma teachers say (along with philosophers, linguists and psychologists) that: “Language brings the subject-object division.” Or, “Language gives a sense of ‘thing-ness.” As if language acted on its own. As though this misuse is intrinsic to language. Maybe the servant (language) has taken over the master (the person)?

Maybe that’s why we produce so many zombie movies, and robot movies? Because we’ve given our power over to concepts; and, in particular to the idea that there is a ‘me’ outside the flow of experience, which observes the flow without being in it? And that we are at the mercy of language?

Blaming language is possibly also a smoke screen. Why would we do this? Well, one reason is that the game has gone so far, now, 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 ‘observing, self-existing, by-standing, timeless self,’ that it looks like giving that up would be akin to suicide.

I’m going to be charitable, here, and suggest that this is because we lack insight into language use. Whatever the motivation, the real situation is the opposite: our trance has bestowed a false meaning on the word ‘death,’ so while we are in the by-stander trance, we are as if dead.

The real nature of timelessness (what is truly akālika), then, becomes lost to our perception, and a false version of timelessness holds its unconscious sway.

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 (findable)
whereof one would say that ‘she’ or ‘he’ exists.
– Samiddhi Sutta in the Samyutta Nikāya

– Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

Do I go by names and concepts? Let me see…. Do I ‘abide, dwell in’ names and concepts?

Imagine that I live inside my naming and conceptualising. What’s that like, to live inside my naming? Hm…

Am I conscious of my naming activities – continuously mindful of how I ‘kind’ situations and events?

What happens if, feeling in the middle of my body, where feelings happen… what happens if I say, ironically: ‘Naming has nothing to do with death, does it?” What happens in my body, in response?

And, am I okay with not depending on the naming for a sense of being here? If I don’t conceive of the subject pole of experiencing, but just leave experiencing freely open in the present moment? What fears come about this way of being?

If I don’t depend on naming for establishing existence, might not I, then, go beyond existence and non-existence, and therefore beyond death?

How else could we use language then?

We could think of language as gesture; as something new we do freshly in each situation, to carry these interactional situations forward. We can use the word ‘gesture’ to mean something very, very broad, here – and very alive, very present. Mindfulness of speaking can bring this about.

For my purposes, right here, as I write, 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?

Falling in the Language Trap

By admin

On July 24, 2016

In Death, Enquiry, Mindfulness

“Those who accord with the truth, when it has been appropriately spoken,
will go beyond the realm of death, which is very difficult to traverse.” – The Dhammapada, verse 86. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

In the Dhammapada there are many verses about the free person. We can connect these things, making sense of the path of freedom. The free person is free of death and rebirth. They are also depicted in, other verses, as free from mental-emotional ‘stuff’; that is, from craving, obsessive thinking, delusion, separation, fear and dukkha.

Clearly, these things go together – death-dukkha and mental-emotional confusion. Freedom from confusion is the deathless. The link is unrealistic ‘self-ing.’ That is, by creating a false sense of self (through misperception of the nature of our sentient processes) we create our death-dukkha.

“Fully knowing the arising and fading of the five sentient processes (the khandas),
one finds happiness and joy. For those who are discerning, this is the deathless.”
– The Dhammapada, verse 374. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

The deathless is realised right here our being, in the arising and falling of present moment experience. No wonder it is said that mindfulness is the way of the deathless.

We have been considering mindfulness and the process of ‘naming.’ So, I want to start to introduce the topic of ‘thinking about thinking.’ This is integral to the fourth placement of mindfulness – where we work with our concepts of life – and it comes to its deepest fruition in the factors of the awakened mind.

We can note, then, both the importance of language in ‘samsara’ (the delusional version of selfing), and in nibbāna (the awake process of being a person), where the process of mindful speaking is freeing.

As children, we learnt to say ‘I,’ but – contrary to what seemed to us – saying ‘I’ didn’t establish a reality corresponding to the word. Words can’t do that. However, the reality of our body, speech and mind was indeed changed by the naming. That’s what words do: change the experiential situation, of which we are a part.

Language points to the flow of experiencing, which ‘belongs’ always in and as the one big life process, but we misunderstood the process of language-ing – by taking it to refer to fixed things. Experientially, these ‘things’ aren’t actually there, as ‘things.’ Perception doesn’t render ‘ultimates.’

I know I say it again and again, but: Words do not point at separate ‘thing-realities.’ They might point, but they point at the process of which the speaker is herself a part. That’s the intimacy of a well-spoken word. The word won’t separate us from the big-R reality, wherein we are a personal flow in a larger flow of ‘ing-ing.’

The most damaging mistake we made was to think that the ‘mind’ is a separate entity (an existent), an agent who sees, hears, senses, and cognizes. As Douglas Harding says so succinctly, in On Having No Head:

“Gradually you learned the fateful and essential art of going out and looking back at yourself, as if from a few feet away and through others’ eyes, and “seeing” yourself from their point of view as a human being like them, with a normal head on your shoulders. Normal yet unique. You came to identify with that particular face in your mirror, and answer to its name.”

In doing so, you foreclosed on the possibility of appreciating a mind like space, where language could interact with present-moment space-like process. Instead you took language to refer to what could be named, objectified, and neatly separated. This is what you had come to identify as your ‘self.’ Knowing this, we can step back from the trap.

“There’s no path in space; there’s no recluse outside of space.
People indulge in separation. There is no separation for tathāgatas.”
– Dhammapada, verse 254. Translated Christopher J. Ash

A tathāgata is ‘one who comes and goes in suchness.’

By admin

On May 1, 2016

In Body, Enquiry, Focusing, Meditation, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices, Radiant Citta

You’ll notice that in this project, that I will – on the basis of a particular experience and theory of language-use – use words that are commonly thought of as ‘metaphysical.’ Some modern Buddhist writers have an apoplectic reaction, when they see the phrase ‘’the deathless.’ And, they reject words like ‘transcendent,’ out of hand. These are words which, nevertheless, point to experiences.

I have no doubt that any word can be helpful when used by one person, and misleading when used by another. The difference will be in how the user grounds the use of the word. Does the speaker, in mindful presence, say ‘transcendent’ or ‘deathless’ while basing their word-use in present-moment, felt experience? Or, do they speak only through theory, or only supported by some unexamined opinion? There’s a big difference.

Because a fellow practitioner of meditation has asked me to share how I conducted my mind during the time I was in hospital for my cancer operation, I’ll mention one such experience and the practices which supported its arising, and say that we need a language to describe the beyond-normal experiences.

I was in hospital, and being present for my experiences in my usual way during this crisis, at times I naturally saw deeply into the dynamics and qualities of my arisen mind-states. I dis-identified with many a temporary perception or thought, because such identifications only obscure the present. I didn’t want to waste the opportunity with selfish mind-states.

Being under the threat of death, and being cared for by the hospital staff, I naturally entered into varying degrees of spacious stillness. Identifying grasping states, and not supporting them, meant that I sometimes experienced, instead, a wonderfully luminous openness, a non-reactive state, which remained when the habits dropped away.

When I shared what I experienced, a friend said that I was being ‘metaphysical.’ To me, I was just choosing my words to fit my experiences; and so, if that’s what metaphysical language can do, then well and good. Some of these experiences were the natural outcome of years of meditative practice; and some of it I specifically invited, with the practice of particular exercises.

For example, in normal times, if I seem to be dull, or dissociated, I can either engage with the dull state, to see what benefit I can find in it – what gems can be extracted from the ore. Or else, I can simply invite a non-distracted state, and simply rest in that. To do this I sometimes combine Voice Dialogue, Focusing, and readily-available tantric methods. Different approaches, for different times, according to need.

In hospital, with much going on – the coming and going of nurses, the voices in the hall, the lights always on, sleeplessness from the pain of my body – with so much happening, the ‘resting in spacious, non-dual awareness’ approach was more helpful to me, and so I chose to ‘cut through’ the contracted states of mind.

I would rest my attention in my whole-body breathing, and invite a state of pure consciousness, and, as a result, I would sometimes know the presence of pure awareness. (These two are different, the latter being more fundamental.)

One experiment which I did in hospital was to say to myself: “Let me speak to the one who is in a pure land, with radiant beings all around.” Then I answered myself: “I am the one who is in a pure land, with radiant beings all around.” (This is a Voice Dialogue kind of move.)

Then, I would bring my attention into my body, and allow the changes which came there, in response. I would name the changes brought about by the naming – including the pain – and I would resonate the words against my felt experience, just to make sure I had the right words to say it. (This is mindfulness and Focusing).

Sometimes, I could purposefully expand some of these changes, if needed (which I learned from Tarthang Tulku’s Kum Nye exercises.) For instance, if a feeling of bliss arose (despite the body’s condition), I could spread that bliss throughout the body, making it feel a lot better.

And, sometimes, there it was – a state people call ‘transcendent’! I was aware of a non-conceptual, purposeless, peaceful ground; a mind like space, without object, luminous and boundless all round. Then, in this naked awareness, I had an appreciation of this body and its trauma. It was a very clear, and caring space.

Furthermore, I spontaneously had a warm appreciation of these radiant humans working on the wards. I sensed the texture of beingness which was there in them, too – which was them. Such beauty, whatever the state of mind with which they were identified. Whether they were harried or bossy, or patient and loving – I could see their radiance.

At that time, through the radiance of my own mind, I knew the others about me had that, too. I had such compassion for them. If this is called mystical, then that’s just fine by me. Give me Meister Eckhart over Martin Heidegger, anytime.

What is it about us, which makes this possible? In the first place, I recognised that my mind was doing a projecting job, and I decided not to be fooled by it. Mindfulness and clear comprehension. I then took charge of my own mind, rather than leave it to my thoughts and emotions. Directed thought.

I invited an unusual (non-conventional) openness toward my experience, including toward the reactivity. Focusing, and Voice Dialogue. I invited the kind of openness taught by meditation teachers over the centuries. Most times this resulted in states of collected, luminous presence; but, occasionally a more profound dimension of reality was available: the deathless element. This can’t be invited, exactly, but it can be known, all being well, from a state which has been invited.

However, most of all, I trusted my deeper natural capacity for unconditional, boundless openness in that situation. It is this which makes peace in adversity possible. We can turn in that direction. I should say, by the way, that the ‘pure land’ concept, which I used in this particular exercise, points to nothing but one’s own natural clear functioning, unobscured by the ego’s limited purview.

The limited view of the egoistic ‘me’ wasn’t helpful; and those circumstances weren’t conducive to doing inner work of the more emotional-psychological variety (though it naturally happened, in some measure, because with spaciousness, insights into reality and mind naturally arose). So, in that situation I mostly chose to cut through to boundlessness. It does, of course, help that, through inner work at other times, in more congenial circumstances, I had experienced such boundlessness. That makes it easier to recognise, when it arises.

I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity, here, to share that process, but my point is that there are non-conceptual realities – realities not dependent on thinking – which deserve a language different to that which we use for whatever has the property of transience, or ‘coming and going.’ ‘Deathless’ is such a word.