What happened to the flower, its petals quivering, and sunlight glinting off the dew on its petals? The vibration of life you felt with this flower has disappeared into the digitized image. In like manner, truth and life cannot be captured by languages in any form— either in words or dots.

It is like trying to capture the sea by throwing a net into it. How can we catch the sea? Why do we keep casting the net? We should throw away the net and just jump into the sea, play with the waves and foam. The sea will receive you only when you throw yourself into it. You and the sea will become one. Only then can you say that you have “obtained” the sea.

Therefore, in an effort to quantify and put into language these experiences that we are constantly creating, we are inventing more words and terms and advancing the technology of informational processing to dizzying heights. Today, we have managed to quantify any and every word into binary bits, expressed in zeroes and ones. In this fashion, words become digitized signals and control machinery and computers.

Let’s do a little experiment: what is in front of you? Whatever it is, can you see that object without recalling its name? It won’t be easy. Whatever we see, we always call forth its name first. In the human consciousness, anything that has a form has a name. Perhaps we cannot see something unless it has a name. When you think you are seeing an object, therefore, what you are doing is reading its name. We see and understand objects through this window of the name. In other words, we live trapped inside a cage of information called the name, but we are so accustomed to it we don’t see the bars.

This is similar to the way our brains function. In neurological terms, knowledge is a particular pattern of connections between neurons in the brain, and learning is a change or addition to that pattern of connections. For example, new knowledge will create a new neuronal connection.

Ultimately, how close our social value system comes to reflect the life value system of the underlying truth of existence is dependent upon how closely language reflects the same, for our language and the associated value system are “hardwired” into our brains, as explained before. If the language we use is off the mark, we have no choice but to be off the mark also, for using such misguided language will force us farther from an understanding of the truth by the acts of speaking, writing, and communicating. We will look at the world upside-down. We will consider that we are succeeding when in actuality we are failing; we will consider ourselves to be maturing when we are becoming more parasitic and dependent.

Some Things Cannot Be Expressed in Words

Although language has these inherent limitations, it has no problem when dealing with things in everyday life, such as drawing up contracts or writing a user’s manual for machinery. It will continue to be sufficient for such uses in the foreseeable future. We only come up against the limitations of language when we seek to express something that is beyond the realm of skills and / or technology.

I always throw some “play” of sorts into my lectures. It doesn’t require any special tools or instruments. It only requires that we use our bodies as playthings: bang on the stomach as you would on a drum; stretch out your cheeks like rubber bands; knead your body like dough or caress it gently as you would a flower. If I do use something, it is a crude, ingenious Vietnamese wooden xylophone called a tapo, or a wooden flute. There is no set melody or rhythm. No set notes or songs. I just play it to the natural rhythm of my inner being. After a while, it coalesces into music, song, even a dance.