Kyogen Oshō said, "It is like a man in a tree, hanging from a branch with his mouth; his hands grasp no bough, his feet rest on no limb. Someone appears under the tree and asks him, 'What is the meaning of bodhidarma's coming from the West?' If he does not answer, he fails to respond to the question. If he does answer, he will lose his life. What would you do in such a situation?"- Mumonkan by Mumon Ekai, translated by Katsuki Sekida
Words carry power. Through words, we can — with some luck — communicate our stories and thoughts across thousands of miles and over thousands of years. The Norse considered the power of their alphabet supernatural, attributing magic to their runes. Their runic alphabet is even said to originate from their chief god, Odin, after a period of sacrificial contemplation (often told as him impaling himself to Yggdrasil, the tree whose roots bind together the realms of the universe, for days). Väinämöinen, a chief god in Finnish mythology, was said to have a magical voice, able to command supernatural effects. In Jewish mythology, the Hebrew language holds power, even able to bestow life to a lifeless statue to create a golem.
Yet words hold no inherent power; simply telling a stone to move does not make it do so. An understanding observer is necessary to draw out the power of words, but similarly, without words, that same intelligent observer is limited to their own understanding, cut off from shared experiences that cannot be immediately observed. Words, instead, allow us to learn from the experiences of others — even those far removed by distance or time — and to share our experiences in turn.
Yet to find an individual who is completely understanding is more than any of us can hope. Our interpretation of words is guided by our own experiences, and these are unique to each of us. Yet, if we were ever to find an individual who completely understood the nuances of what we had to say exactly as we did ourselves, then we would have someone who was either an echo of ourselves or contextually omniscient, and either way the words would be a pointless redundancy to them. We could, perhaps, try to establish formal definitions for every word and an infallible syntax structure, but it is difficult to pin down formalized notions for such things as "nostalgia" or "beauty", and too often already do so many debates devolve into arguments over semantics instead efforts to find truths. Moreover, as the mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated, no sufficiently expressive system is not without its paradoxes, but that is a discussion for another post if not another author.
Taoist and Zen teachings both maintain the limitations of words. The Tao Te Ching begins:
The way that can be articulately described is not the Unchanging Way.
The name that can be said out loud is not the Unchanging Name.
This seems like a rather counterintuitive way to start out a book, announcing the author's intention to put into words that which cannot be put into words. Yet both the philosophies of Zen and Tao have at their core a pursuit of thought patterns at cognitive levels other than surface thoughts — ways of thinking that therein cannot be reached purely through the mere reading of words without deeper consideration. Because of the inherent limitations of interpersonal communication, we can encourage patterns of thinking with words, but cannot guarantee them. Opening the Tao Te Ching by announcing that the concepts within it cannot be fully articulated is simply to warn the reader that they must not be simply a reader but a student, not simply receiving the words but considering them more thoroughly, or else their actual meaning would be lost on the reader.
As Sekida tells it, Kyogen, while a student of Zen, encountered the limitations of words. He had studied the teachings of Zen thoroughly, but knowing the words and reaching the mindset they described were two very different things. Seeing that the words hindered Kyogen, his master, Isan, proposed a question to him that he knew he would not find an answer to in his texts. After attempting to answer and begging for an explanation, Isan replied, "What I say belongs to my own understanding. How can that benefit your mind's eye?"
Frustrated and defeated, Kyogen burnt his books and abandoned his study, declaring "You cannot fill an empty stomach with paintings of rice cakes." Leaving his school and his master, humbled if not humiliated, he went to take up the lowly job of grave-keeper. However, it was this acceptance of insignificance that allowed him to abandon his ego and begin his path to Zen enlightenment.
It is not lost on me that one of the most significant moments of my own life was when I, too, was feeling insignificant. More importantly, though, was not that I felt insignificant, but that I decided to accept insignificance. I found that it is not whether or not one's self is significant that is itself significant. The consideration of the self should not be purely of the self, but of one's place in the world, even in a purely literal, physical, causal sense. The egocentricity we possess imposes our beliefs upon the world and muddles the truth. The disparity between what really is and what we believe should be — often what we believe we deserve — is the source of despair, anger, greed, etc. Our habits of comparing ourselves with others furthers this disparity and alienates those others from us, creating jealousy and conflict when we could be cooperating to combine our efforts into something more.
Shuzan held out his short staff and said: "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now, what do you wish to call this?"
The short staff is what it is, but considered only unto itself and not within the context it exists, we know nothing about its reality. Similarly we should consider ourselves, not as isolated individuals, but as parts of the universe we exist in. We should strive for the abandonment of ego; not only is that part of the path to Zen enlightenment, but the Christians, too, teach "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."
The Zen moreover teach the pursuit of awareness as a tool to find one's place in one's environment — for considering oneself in the context of everything else. For Kyogen Oshō, pure awareness was said to have been achieved when, while sweeping, he heard a stone strike bamboo, and the sound was considered not simply as a categorized and semantic piece of experience as we tend to approach everything but in its pure form as it truly was, resonating and echoing, and stilling of Kyogen's thoughts. For me, the first time I encountered my true, contextual self was when my thoughts were similarly arrested by a thunderstorm, and its immensity as well as my recent life experiences left me humbled, yet led me to discover that I could do far more as part of the universe than as an isolated individual.
Words, like ourselves, short staves, and everything else, should therein be considered in context. We should know both their power and their limitations. Relying purely on words leaves us in a situation like the man hanging from a tree by his mouth, doomed to fail whether he answers or not. Yet we are not capable of telepathy or Vulcan mind melds; words are in many cases the most effective tool we have in communicating our thoughts, and therein participating in this pursuit of acting in context with the rest of the universe — acting with those others capable of receiving our words.
Abandonment of ego, it seems to me, is only the first step. Exploring the potential of the larger patterns we are part of is the natural logical progression. Yet to fully do this, we are often left with little more than words to share our thoughts and experiences. It is through words that we can extend our intellectual essence into others, and allow their words to build us up — being careful not to simply stare at paintings of rice cakes, considering words at their surface and neglecting to explore deeper truths. Words may often be all we have, but, then, it is a good thing that words carry power.
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