Words
Sandokai1, a well known Buddhist teaching poem, contains the lines, “If from your experience of the senses basic truth you do not know, how can you ever find the path that certain is, no matter how far distant you may walk?”
It’s straightforward enough to understand the logic of of such a simple piece of advice. Though it is simple, it may be not be so easy to really penetrate the practice. It’s in wordless practice-experience that the inexhaustible trustworthiness of basic truth is realized. The quote is pointing to the direct exposure of mind and body to what is free from the grasping of thought and feeling. Of necessity, nirvana of body and mind is all involving, so though it is simple, it is no easy matter to get free from the complex illusion of personal possession that is such a hindrance.
Words like these are forged in ongoing experience. The practice of them does not have a beginning or an end. Dharma words are not words to hide anything behind. Though the experience being pointed to is nothing other than liberation, to a mind accustomed to insisting on its continuity, liberation will likely seem unappealing. Through the misuse of thought and sensation, unrestricted existence, which is always accessible, is neglected. It isn’t easy to turn around and face the creating of this habitual mind.
Any reliance on misusing thought and sensation to control experience, will lead towards appropriating words of teaching in order to validate a continuous self. This creates the impression that there is realization of the teaching and that the teaching is being applied in practice. Whereas when thought is being used to intervene between things, the only ongoing experience is that of reinforcing ignorance because there is no examination, no real looking. Thought is creating a facsimile of direct experience of the senses. As long as dharma experience is being denied, there is no illumination of mind and a status quo is maintained. This is what ignorance is being used for, to keep the illusion of a continuous unchanging self existence – alive and happy – at all costs. No wonder that it is difficult to put even simple guidance into practice, it touches on very core of what we believe ourselves to be.
In thoroughly putting one teaching into practice, all aspects of teaching will be open too, in actively respecting it, even a short and simple teaching becomes a treasure. Even when incomprehension or confusion arises from teaching, these too become gateways to the liberated dharma of things rather than dead ends. “I don’t understand”, doesn’t become a full stop. It is an invitation to look closely, uninviting though it may seem at first.
“Ultimate serenity is the coming to rest of all ways of taking things, the repose of named things; no truth has been taught by a Buddha for anyone, anywhere.”2
There is experience at all times. When everything is experience, there isn’t someone who experiences things. Oh my! – it can seem impossible to enter this gate-less gate. I don’t inhabit my body, I am not located somewhere outside of it or inbetween, thus compassion–wisdom is possible. Experience cannot be repressed. Experience of the senses does not stop and start. Experience is not mine or someone else’s. Practice-enlightenment is found in the precision of now which cannot be grasped. It’s not found in special experiences or different experiences from now.
Human language, birdsong and silence, for an example, share an equality, as do all things. Their essential equality doesn’t make a mush or make them the same, each remain distinct. Hearing these three is not a matter of substituting one for another or in making comparisons. One is not better than another, they all convey themselves beyond perfection or imperfection. Everything is communicating ceaselessly, even stones are. Meaning isn’t hidden behind any communication, everything is already speaking clearly, even confusion is. Speech, birdsong and silence don’t impede, replace, or overlap one another.
Over time, observations can develop useful understandings. Interpretations, explanations and so on, are abstractions and abstraction is as equally truth as is direct experience. Even mistaken concepts are real, though they are not so good in beneficial service. The dharma of birdsong is only manifest at the time when there is birdsong. Explanations of birdsong are explanations and are not the less for it. Explanation and unmediated experience should not be muddled though, neither can be really heard if they are
Unless we are getting ourselves out of the way, words of dharma will be dead to us,. We will be one thing, the words will be another, and never shall the two meet and merge. When we are confused by our own minds, then abstraction will be taken for immediate experience while it is actually being used to block it. When reading a book and there is a meeting, the text and the reader come alive together, influencing each other in the experience. The reader and the words are not really two things as nothing can be inserted between them, though this doesn’t appear as something we can recognize. This obviously applies to all activities and situations, our thoughts about what we are doing are not a foundation for building anything on. When someone asked a monk why he spent so much time reading scriptures he replied, “To rest my eyes”, this is saying the same thing. The activity is not nothing and it’s not needing to make something out of itself. While we treasure views and opinions, that’s what we get, views, opinions, dead ends.
Language and conceptual thinking are a vital part of being human. Thinking and speech can simply be infused with the vitality of the dharma or can become a stumbling block to it. Our mistaken dependence on thinking up and conceptualizing our experience is complex, intricately and viscerally entwined with powerful elements in its building. No matter how simple or sophisticated a person we are, we can easily obstruct ourselves with thoughts and thinking and this must be continually worked with in realizing intrinsic enlightenment.
Confusion around language and ideation may dissolve into experience with nothing being lost. We, “have words and yet have no words” without contrivance. “The Buddha taught everyday for 45 years and never spoke a word” – even as its clear that words cannot encapsulate experience, they are not rejected or looked down upon in the slightest. Neither words and no-words are not used to hide a self behind and direct experience is not elevated above anything. Dharma words both come out of, and point back to experience, without either imposing on and impeding the other. Language is straightforwardly beneficial when it is in the service of liberation.
1. Sandokai, (Sekito Kisen, 700-790). The title has various possible translations, all similar variations of, ‘Merging of Difference and Unity’. You might also be interested in, ‘The Most Excellent Mirror Samadhi’, (‘Hokyo Zammai’ attr: Tozan Ryokai, 807-869). Another teaching poem, in the first third or so of this writing, several examples of the use and misuse of words are pointed to. Both these poems are central to the Soto Zen tradition and are regarded as scriptures. The text of these (annotated for chanting), are freely available at www.throssel.org.uk – on the download page. Other sources and translations are around too.
2. Nagarjuna,(150 – 250, disputed), Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK) (25:24)