unspeakable oneness

The unspeakable oneness

George Clark, 28 February 2008.

The more that I come to appreciate the interconnectedness of all things the harder it gets to speak about it. Boundaries dissolve.

When I  speak I chop reality into seemingly individuated bits (nouns: subjects and objects) and then make up stories to explain the connections between the bits (verbs).

A cat (noun:subject) sat on (verb) a mat (noun:object)

But, before I speak, stuff happens in my brain (ie there is thinking/feeling). This is obvious when I am fully rational but, even when words are just blurted out, there will have been unconscious causes and conditions for these words rather than those.

So what is going on?

Subject	Verb	Object
Thoughts (and feelings)	have	causes and conditions
Causes and conditions	can be	internal and/or external
Internal processes	create	nouns and verbs
Nouns and verbs	vary	between cultures
Nouns and verbs	do not correspond to	the real reality
The reality which can be described	is not	the real reality

 

And this will be why the Tao teh  Ching reckons that, "Those who speak do not know and those who know do not speak".

But that is perhaps overly robust. Speech may be a finger pointing at the moon but at least it suggests that there is a moon. Silence may not be golden when approaching the interconnectedness. A rough sketch map is better than no map at all: it signals that there is a territory to be explored.