Words, words, words...

(published in JigsawZen.com 2005)

When I started looking into Zen, I often bumped into expressions about how ‘Zen is beyond words’ or that ‘words cannot describe Zen at all’. Of course, in my little TV fed mind, something that’s ‘beyond words’ is something spectacular, something that renders you speechless. At times I used to get the impression that perhaps Zen was so subtle and mysterious and ‘other worldly’ that the words we use to describe our everyday, ordinary experiences were simply inadequate to explain it. Some so called Zen Masters have taken this position to such an outrageous and pompous extreme that when asked by laymen what Zen was, they have answered by doing the oddest things; like peeling and eating a banana for instance. There you go: my wisdom is so subtle and impossible for you to comprehend that peeling and eating a banana makes more sense than any words I could ever use to answer. What a load of garbage…

To make matters worse, those who intend to clarify this position, propose we go ‘beyond words’. What is often suggested is that words are like fingers that point to the Moon. In a way, what this metaphor suggests is that words are just the fingers and that we are not to look at them but rather in the direction in which they are pointing. Now, how to look beyond words is not really that obvious. We do a bit of that when we use metaphors because the literal meaning of the words is not the meaning that is intended in the phrase. However, the admonition of not staring at the finger is given in a wider sense. We are not only supposed to look beyond the literal meaning of words, we are also expected to look beyond the intellectual contrivances we might elaborate thereof.

How can we possibly do that? The paragraphs above are precisely what we are warned not to do: an entanglement of words and speculations. How are we supposed to ‘understand’ something without an intellectual framework and a language that allows us to construct complex ideas?

As I scratched my head over this issue, an old Zen story came to my rescue…

In ancient China, what was socially expected from men was that they should seek wisdom after a certain age. It was simply one of those duties in life. Once all the work was done to provide for the family, once the children had become self sufficient adults, it was time for men to search the truth. And as so many others, there was a Chinese government officer who decided it was about time he embarked in this final mission. To get started, he did some research and discovered that the most famous Zen Master in China lived across the country. In those days, traveling across China was no simple feat. This officer had to invest a pile of money to put together a caravan with horses, provisions and servants in order to journey for quite a number of weeks.

When he finally met the famous wise man, the officer asked something like: ‘In a few words, what is the most important aspect of Zen?’

The old master fooled around with his beard while he thought of a good answer and finally looked up and said: ‘Do what is good, avoid what is bad.’

The officer was struck dumb, feeling dizzy with rage and frustration. ‘I have traveled for weeks exposing myself and my money to all these perils and the words you give me could have been said by a small child’

‘It is true a child can say these words’ replied the Zen master, ‘but to understand them and live by them is difficult even for an old man like me.’

‘Understanding’ here has more to do with experience and observation than with the intellectual deconstruction of words and phrases. Not to mention the fact that most of the time we don’t even go as far as to ‘deconstruct’ anything at all. It’s much easier to lay hands on the best fitting stereotype and squeeze the words through it. But even if you don’t do this, it’s good to keep in mind that words have their limitations. To put too much stock into them involves the risk of winding round in circles without really getting anywhere.

The limitation of words, though, is a bit more important than we usually believe. Words are, in fact, quite unable to describe almost any experience we have. The other day I tried to use words to describe my experience while brushing my teeth. Yeah, I know. I should see a doctor… But you’d be surprised at the enormity of the task. Not only are the physical sensations quite unique and complex. You also have your ‘inner sensations’ like your wandering attention and the way it shifts continuously; from the trickling sound of the open tap to the distorted and magnified lines of the fake marble through a rogue drop of water, to the sensation of your feet on the cold tiles. During those few moments in front of the mirror the amount of stupid thoughts that crossed my mind and that produced alterations in my mood (which was overall gloomy since it was a Monday morning) was enough to make you dizzy. And that’s just a part of it. All of our experiences have that unique aspect to them which makes them ‘our experiences’. There is always that indescribable sensation of ‘ourselves’ that makes it clear that we are having that experience instead of someone else having it.

If someone comes up to me and says: ‘Hey, you just can’t put Zen into words’, I’d have to answer: ‘Can you really put any other experience into words, pal?’

But words can be very useful and even necessary if you want to learn or understand any given thing; even Zen. Words can be the starting point. The fingers, as I mentioned before, that point towards some understanding of our own. To go beyond these words is really not such a big deal. Once words settle down, they will surely echo on some memory of a past experience or give you a glimpse to something you don’t yet truly understand. ‘Do what is good and avoid what is bad’ meant different things to the old man and to the officer. The more you observe your own experience, the more likely the words will echo deeply. The more you rush to use stereotypes to make sense out of your daily chaos, the shallower will be the mark the words imprint on you. Then again, the more you stir and shake the words, the murkier their true meaning will appear. If you wind up into endless speculations about what this or that might mean you’d be, as the Buddha said in the Lankavatara Sutra, like an elephant floundering in deep mud. Once the words are given, go brush your teeth instead of speculating on what they mean. At some point or another, it is likely that words and experience will connect somehow and some sort of understanding will come about.

Now, I have used an awful amount of words just to point out the relative value they have. That only goes to show that part of the value of words depends on the grace with which they are used. Compare all the nonsense you’ve read so far with the concise subtlety of the opening paragraph of the Tao Te Ching:

Even the finest teaching is not the Tao itself.
Even the finest name is insufficient to define it.
Without words, the Tao can be experienced,
and without a name, it can be known.
To conduct one's life according to the Tao,
is to conduct one's life without regrets;
to realize that potential within oneself
which is of benefit to all.
Though words or names are not required
to live one's life this way,
to describe it, words and names are used,
that we might better clarify
the way of which we speak,
without confusing it with other ways
in which an individual might choose to live.
Through knowledge, intellectual thought and words,
the manifestations of the Tao are known,
but without such intellectual intent
we might experience the Tao itself.
Both knowledge and experience are real,
but reality has many forms,
which seem to cause complexity.
By using the means appropriate,
we extend ourselves beyond
the barriers of such complexity,
and so experience the Tao.

Corot's 'Woman in Blue' (2008 Unfinished)

Drawing of a sophisticated lady (1989)

A walk in the Australian Outback

(published in JigsawZen.com 2005)

I’m not really fond of recommending books. Somehow, the times I have spoken well of some particular book, or convinced someone to read one, the result has been quite disappointing. I suppose books either do something to you or they don’t. That might depend on the book itself, but it surely depends on your frame of mind and your particular circumstances at the time. All the same, it’s quite a turn-off to get a bad review of a book you thought was great. In spite of that, every now and then I take my chances and recommend a book to someone only to later remind myself that I shouldn’t have.

However, my policy of not recommending books doesn’t mean that people can’t recommend books to me. In fact, some people insist on recommending books that will change my life; books that I have to read. And that’s about what happened a few days ago. A person I know, let’s call him Charlie, not only recommended a book to me; he bought it, had it wrapped up as a gift and gave it to me. It was one of those awkward moments. ‘Hey, thanks so much! I’ll read it! ... Yeah, when I retire…’ Initially, I had the strongest impression that this book would just sit on my bookshelf collecting dust. However, a few days later Charlie asked me if I had started reading it so I could discuss it with him. Boy! I was trapped. So I just had to go ahead and read the damn thing.

The book was lousy to say the least. I read it in Spanish so perhaps part of the fault was in the translation. Anyway, it’s basically one of those New Age Self Help books about how some ancestral wisdom that has been kept a secret all these years can make your life a dreamlike pastel of spirituality. This one is disguised as a sociological documentary and the tale of an inner journey towards spirituality at the same time. The book was written by Marlo Morgan and is called ‘Mutant message down under’. It’s about an American woman who has the mysterious privilege of being dragged along by a tribe of Australian aborigines on a three month walk through the Australian deserts. Of course, as the journey progresses, so does an inner journey in which the author discovers the ancient wisdom of the tribe members.

It’s a novel, OK? But the author clarifies that it is based on actual facts and that the tribe and its wisdom are the ‘real deal’. In fact, there has been quite a bit of debate as to the authenticity of Morgan’s tale and the book was recently reclassified from ‘non-fiction’ to ‘fiction’. I don’t really give a damn if it’s real or not. Some day I’ll write about my feelings on why certain claims don’t need to be ‘authentic’ to be true or vice versa (sometimes, very ‘authentic’ claims are simply rubbish.) What I am interested in, in any case, is how the views of the author reflect a number of myths or collective opinions that are pretty widespread and how those collective opinions rest on nothing but themselves.

But first, let’s take a look at the book. Morgan claims that this tribe is in perfect communion with the universe and all of nature. They use the little resources available in the desert to satisfy their needs and are very careful not to disrupt the balance of nature. They are happy and healthy and live a life more spiritual than we, poor alienated westerners, could even dream of. They have preserved the original design of mankind not letting it be deformed by the vices of civilization (they call themselves the ‘Real People’ while we are the ‘Mutants’). They ‘perceive’ the nutritious roots of certain plants without the need of digging (and causing the useless death of those plants without mature roots) and they even use telepathy as a way of communicating among themselves through long distances.

I thought the book sucked. However, if you want a more level headed opinion you can check this fairly balanced review of the book here: http://quanta-gaia.org/reviews/books/mutantMessage.html

First, I would like to tackle the idea that primitive cultures lived more harmoniously with nature and were somehow more spiritual or less alienated from their true nature than we are (we, being the urban-capitalist-technology dependant-compulsive consumers.) I have bumped into this idea a number of times but perhaps a nice example of this myth comes across in Kevin Costner’s ‘Dances with wolves’. The white man, with all his sophisticated weapons and uniforms and industry tramples carelessly over the gentle and wise Sioux community, whom we learn about through John Dunbar’s account of the time he spent with them.

This inverse parallelism between technological and urban sophistication and natural wisdom, gentleness and spirituality has its roots in the Promethean myth. Prometheus stole the fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. Now this was a grave offense since the use of fire was the prerogative of the gods. So, in order to appease their fury, he taught humans how to offer sacrifices to them. In the end, however, he was punished by Zeus (he was tied to a rock and a mythological bird would eat out his liver every day… heeeww…) But Zeus also punished mankind by sending Pandora and her box. You know the rest of the story… As the introducer of fire and inventor of sacrifice, Prometheus is seen as the patron of human civilization. What did we learn from the Promethean myth? We learnt that civilization puts us at odds with the natural forces. Famine, disease and other evils are what we get for being civilized.

Mary Shelley gave a twist to the Promethean myth when she wrote her famous novel ‘Frankenstein’. In this new version of the myth, man, through science and technology plays god and basically does stuff that only god should be allowed to do. The consequences are dire of course. Moreover, the creation rebels against its creator indicating that the irresponsible use of technologies can have harmful consequences. This reinvented myth has impregnated our psyches. We feel that our technology based society, basically our urban western life styles, are at odds with the way things ought to be. We are alienated by our own artificial creations.

Based on this myth, of course, redemption comes when we renounce our sophisticated and over technified life styles and adopt more ‘natural’ ways. Hence, primitive societies and simple life styles in contact with nature have become the epitome of redemption and spirituality. But this is not necessarily true. Of course, it could be true in some ways, but not as a general rule. As we do with so many things, we tend to idealize that which we don’t have and excessively bitch about what we do have. If you feel alienated and out of touch with yourself, don’t go blaming it on civilization and please don’t daydream about the simple life: it’s just a fantasy we have come to believe in.

My Zen teacher once told me of a retreat he had organized in the hills of Córdoba, a province that’s just about in the middle of Argentina. He had found a guy who was letting rooms in a remote outpost in the sierras. This was a chance to have a five day Zazen retreat in the middle of nowhere, in contact with nature and living the simple life. Many students signed up and were pretty excited about being out there in contact with nature. It turns out that the son of the housekeeper was a bored teenager who longed for the excitement of the urban life and spent his hours listening to heavy metal rock so loud that you could hear it for miles. These people had traveled far looking for a ‘spiritual experience’ (nature, simplicity and silence) and ended up surrounded by blaring loudspeakers. Everyone was terribly pissed off but my Zen teacher just thought it was a good example of how reality has this bad habit of not conforming to our fantasies about it.

The second thing I wanted to discuss in this article is the idea that in order to acquire legitimate knowledge on some specific subject, you should travel far away to the ‘true source’ of that knowledge. I suppose that if you want to learn how to surf, it’s only logical to go somewhere with waves. But that doesn’t necessarily apply to other stuff and least of all to ‘spiritual’ matters. I don’t really like the word ‘spiritual’. Let’s say that you want to understand your life better or have an intuitive understanding of reality. Would it do you any good to go search for the lost wisdom of the Australian aborigines?

Many people seem to think it would. It goes more or less like this: the Truth is something very concrete and real, yet somehow we don’t seem to have it or understand it and none of the folks we know or run into every day seem to have it either. Therefore, it must be somewhere else, somewhere far away or in possession of someone special; in India, in the forbidden books of

occultist Europe, inside the pyramids at Gizah, in possession of a forgotten tribe of Australian aborigines or in the lost continent of Atlantis. We (I’ll include myself in this one folks) have a tendency to believe that the Truth is some sort of well kept secret, available only to a few privileged who manage their way up the Himalayas for an appointment with Lama Watchamacallit.

When I was a kid of about 17, I briefly joined a rather curious Raja Yoga group. My acquaintance with them was very short because they kind of gave me the creeps. Anyway, there was this woman who talked and talked. She interrupted the teacher every few moments with some silly comment. The amount of stupidity that came out of that woman’s mouth was unbelievable. But the rest of the group paid a lot of attention to her. You see, she had been to India. Twice! She had met the important people at the headquarters! I felt a stab of envy when I was told she’d been to a retreat in India, wondering if the experience of being so close to those wise men and women had in some way affected her or made her more ‘advanced’ than I was. What a loser…

During the 13th century, the wisdom of Zen had its headquarters, so to say, in China. In fact, if you happened to live in Japan at the time, almost anything cultural had it’s epicenter in China. If you expected to be someone in the Zen world and hadn’t been to China, your chances were slim. Zen texts, as most of the important literature in Japan, were written in Chinese and Buddhist ceremonies were carried out in Chinese as well. Of course, all the big Zen Masters were from China. Where else would they be from? Most of the Zen (Ch’an) Monasteries since the time of Bodhidharma were located in an area called Shaolin. You might remember that old TV series Kung Fu with David Carradine… That’s right Little Grasshopper…

It so happened that there was a bright young Zen monk in Japan called Dogen (1200-1253). Dogen was very bright but hadn’t been to China yet. Many elders thought Dogen had a great future ahead and decided he was to be sent to China to learn Zen with the hot shots. With great effort, they sent him all the way there to bring back some of their wisdom. Years later, as the time for Dogen’s return approached, the excitement grew among the monks. What great teachings would he bring back from the land of the wise? But when he returned, Dogen bluntly said: “I have come back empty-handed. I have realized only that the eyes are horizontal and the nose is vertical.”

This is a legendary comment that is filled with different meanings. We will concentrate only on one though. Where do you need to travel to in order to learn that the eyes are horizontal and the nose is vertical? Do you need to go to India, Tibet, China or the Australian Outback to learn that? Obviously not. What Dogen meant, among other things, is that to learn about reality you don’t really need to go anywhere. The truth is always right in your face. We keep pushing it aside to see all these far away mysterious places full of excitement and fantasy, but our very own efforts to search for reality in exotic places result only in distraction from the real –right in you face- deal.

While you chew on that, I have to figure out a way to tell Charlie what I think about the book without hurting his feelings…