It is hard to imagine a life without words and phrases which serve as symbols and as concepts. Language, which seems so natural to us, helps us to express ourselves more clearly but also to name and understand the world.
When you would theoretically take from someone the ability to understand and use the words of the language he only knows and his knowledge about the verbal language, he would have nothing anymore to name his perceptions, feelings, and experiences. Not even able to run thoughts as we know them with words.
This person would be probably enlightened.
It sounds perhaps a bit provocative, but enlightened people have looked behind the curtain of language and it’s concepts, unlearned all of it inside, to find the everlasting silence of the present moment. And by this liberation in the deepest sense. Similar to little children who just discover and play mainly and this totally without speaking a language. They are a prove, that everybody of us used to be silent and more connected to the present moment. Most of us don’t remember a lot from these “speechless” days.
Our dependence on using language all of the time, almost like hanging to language like to a life vest, stands in the way.
Unless you have experienced moments of silence in your mind after learning to speak, moments in which you became with your thoughts very silent, by simply extending the breaks between two thoughts, so to speak moments of awareness but without words in forms of thoughts, you haven’t experienced it since the “good old days” that being without language is indeed possible.
Being without words in your mind is possible for some seconds, minutes, hours or even days by some really experienced yogis, lamas and Zen masters.
Why am I talking about language instead of concepts?
Because concepts only exist due to and within language. In the language of words and their meanings. Language and its concepts is something we learn as young humans and many of us use language without big reflection until they die. Not understanding that language itself is often the source and transmitter of suffering. Words as thoughts are connected to our feelings through our nervous system.
This is why little children seem to be so easy and happy most of the time.
They don’t know about all the bullshit that can come with languages and conceptual thinking. Like racism and fascism for instance. Or any rather separating and walls building concepts.
It is by far of course not all bad that comes with language but you get the point.
Language helps us to understand and learn, to express our feelings and thoughts to one another but it also is the reason why we don’t experience directly our true silent self and the absolute truth which is free of all words, thoughts, and concepts. Which is even free of the concept of the absolute truth which isn’t expressible with words. Only poorly describable. Like a finger which is pointing to it but isn’t it.
Language, as long as not being understood in this way, is only the carrier of illusion according to Buddhism, Zen-Buddhism, Yoga and Daoism for example. Jesus looked most likely behind the curtain of language too. Language is besides complete silence the best help though to transmit its easily illusionary effect.
Once you look behind its illusionary effect and experience moments of no thinking in concepts and beliefs but just being solely awareness, the result is to experience seemingly without a reason “Bliss”.
That is our bottom of pure human existence. And also its heights. It is according to Yoga the union of the limited, the mind which thinks conceptually, with the unlimited, the pure awareness of us, like the cloudless sky. Your limited centered I perspective and the experience of your existence and the realization of being none of all the concepts, beliefs and illusions but just pure and wakeful awareness of what is happening within and outside of you.
Being free and infinitely vast as the sky. Being free to choose your favorite and most serving illusions in forms of thoughts, concepts, and beliefs.
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music, as Aldous Huxley, the author of “Brave New World” said.
The word “tree” is just a symbol for something that comes out of the ground and is creating little fine things that are during summertime mostly greenish and in autumn times perhaps reddish, orange and yellow. Losing those fine things before winter and growing them again after winter. In our northern or very southern hemisphere or in heights.
A house is matter or very high vibrating dense energy in a form big enough to have space inside for people being able to be or live in.
A human being is a bag of skin, hold by some intelligent structure of bones and muscles, driven by an invisible vital life force or energy, that makes this bag of skin, bones, flesh, and organs move and make sounds. Even gives the bag of skin a rather ugly organ called the brain which is capable of consciousness and incredibly much more by its subconscious and unconscious part. According to sages and gurus, there are several layers of “life energy” which aren’t seeable and touchable with our senses of seeing and touching.
As soon as we name something, we deny it to be much more than what we name it.
That is why good old Jiddu Krishnamurti recommended to simply watch things or situations.
Watch things, people or situations as if they were running on a big wide 365° screen. Without comparing, commenting or judging what you see. And feel.
Watch what they do or how they are.
By not immediately using language but observing it, we permit ourselves to receive information we wouldn’t get by directly naming things. Our conceptual mind wants to be faster than what our intuition and subconsciousness could make us become aware about.
Now the tricky part of talking about this is that the ego of a person who is particularly attached to our human thoughts and beliefs and who lets these thoughts and beliefs define him, can take it as an attack on his worldview or the view, how existence just is. It can perceive this talking about, that all thoughts and beliefs are just concepts and therefore made up, as an attack of its understanding of the world.
As an unmasking of its true face. Being discovered as being a fake and by this being obliterated of its fake version.
Realizing that you made your beliefs up, but you could have all the time made other beliefs instead of your chosen ones up too, can feel like waking up from a sleep or dream.
If you sort of feel attacked, how about those things and concepts only exist by giving them a meaning? This is how communication overall is supposed to work. A collective of people agrees to share the meanings of certain things. Once you have a different meaning of a thing, you can have difficulties understanding the other.
Making sure of understanding the same or figuring out that there are different meanings to the same thing, is, therefore, a fundamental for effective communication.
Our brain and mind are wired to give things meaning. It is what makes us human amongst more.
A concept is any thought that attempts to make something out of nothing.
Or out of “no thing”. You can open a dictionary and only find concepts. You can open a Brockhaus or Lexicon and everything you find inside is not made up but it was everything giving a name, description, function, and meaning. Words serving as symbols.
Don’t get me wrong; I love lexicon, knowledge about other cultures, things, history and all there is to learn or know about. But understanding that it is all created by the human mind, it can facilitate to become quiet or silent in your mind if you desire that.
By its nature, the things we give meaning to can feel important to us individually and subjectively, but by realizing that they are all made up, sort of being artificial or simply “Extra”, we experience the liberty of feeling non-judgemental and non-comparing state of consciousness of peace and harmony, our all the time us accompanying essence.
What makes you suffer and feel not in peace and harmony is the particular meaning you give things. The story you tell yourself about the experienced, mentally, emotionally, spiritually or physically, is what makes you suffer or cheer. The concepts you use. Or unconsciously choose to be more accurate. Concepts you identify with because you personalized them.
By doing so, you have cut yourself from all the other possible concepts and definitions. Your suffering, if not physical, even though without your consciousness you even don’t perceive it, is only mental or in your mind. Changing your mind or focus can change the sensation of suffering to something else.
Freedom lies in deeply realizing and applying this in your daily life.
Total freedom, Nirvana, Moksha, Satori and Samadhi are states of consciousness that are free of taking thoughts, beliefs, concepts for real – all of the concepts one can possibly think of.
It is not a geographical place but a way of thinking or better said experienced non-thinking, being aware of the total choice of believing and giving meaning to things. Being free of concepts and able to use them consciously, intelligently and wisely. Knowing that all of them are just “Extra” but not the absolute reality itself. Pure consciousness which is your essence is also the absolute truth.
“When you touch this basic nature of human life you feel relief. This is your final abode, your terminal station. If you take the train of human life, finally you arrive at the terminal station. It seems to be a dead-end, but it is not the usual dead end. When you reach that terminal station it is the end, but it is also the beginning. At that dead-end, something happens. A new life comes up. From this basic place, you can go anywhere—to the north, to the west, to the south, to the east—everywhere. Your life is open in all directions.”
― Dainin Katagiri, Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time
Check your concepts and beliefs about yourself and what is possible for you. Don’t take them for granted unless you consciously choose them as your favorite illusions which serve your well-being and success the most and be what you are in essence;
Free.
