I am reading the book book “China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen” by David Hinton (Shambhala Press, 2020). In it, he traces the movement of Buddhism as it traveled to China from India, and then on to Japan and the west. He looks at the transformations that occurred as Buddhism encountered the ancient Chinese traditions, notably Taoism, and how what emerged and became “Zen Buddhism” has perhaps more in common with Taoism at some fundamental levels.
His primary tactic in this exploration is to look at Chinese words, characters, that hold critical meaning for Ch’an (Zen) and Taoism. By tracing back the entomology of these pictographs he draws links to Taoist ideas that seem to have permeated the Buddhist thinking and subsequent teaching.
This exploration of Chinese language points to a unique framework for understanding that remains quite distinct from traditional western conceptualization around language.
“And indeed, language is described this way in the Judeo-Christian myth that still shapes Western assumptions in fundamental ways, for the language of humans was God’s language at the beginning, so it oddly predates the physical universe. When language functions in this mimetic sense, it embodies an absolute separation between the identity-center (“soul”) and reality. And that separation defines the most fundamental level of experience.”
China Root by David Hinton, Page 42 from the section titled “Word”.
The Western mind has amazing capabilities to segment out portions of the world for examination. it is adept at plucking one idea, ridding it of any nagging context, and examining it as if it existed in a vacuum. This is the hallmark of western scientific method and reductionist thinking.
Chinese pictographs, and the characters which evolved from them, Hinton writes, maintain a direct visual connection to the thing which they seek to describe. This picto/linguistic root maintains a connection to the natural world, a lifeline to something “real” rather than simply conceptual.
The way this operates makes me think of a tablecloth spread out on a flat surface. One seems the whole cloth, but may pick up any small section at a time to give a name to. That small section of cloth may, for a time, be considered on its own, but remains connected to the whole. When it is released the segment which was described returns to its context within the larger whole. Indeed, it was never disconnected, only artificially segmented out, from that whole.
Not only the pictographic roots, but also the method by which characters combine and convey meaning in Chinese. Characters are often made up of other characters, gaining meaning through the compounding and relationship of ideas one up on the other. In addition there is not conjugation. Characters can be both verb and noun, and can mean multiple things in relation from one usage case to the next. Here too we see that the words themselves do not remain static like 1’s and 0’s. They are not read alone but must be considered taken together and taken in the context of which they are encountered (on a painting, newspaper, spoken word, etc).
Western language, on the other hand, can be dialed in to attempt a highly specific context-free meaning. Indeed, the ongoing experiment of western language and philosophy is to continue drilling every more finely towards specific shared understanding of concepts so that they can be shared and passed on with the least amount of misunderstanding.
At a fundamental level the Western language sees things as separate units or elements, whereas the Chinese language names elements within a whole. Western language strives to be sterile and liberated from contextual requirements, while Chinese cannot be understood without taking elements into relation with one another.
Imagining a universal sense of oneness may not be quite so esoteric if one’s native language automatically assumes this sort of fundamental connection. Whereas, to the Western perspective it may certainly feel abrasively foreign. It is not simply a matter of perspective, but must be tunneled towards through the inherent barriers of the language itself.
For me the lens is a powerful representation of how language both inhibits and shapes our perceptions. Looking through a lens is like grasping at a bit of tablecloth. Temporarily we are able to extract a portion of our world out from that which is exists.
Depending on whether one seeks to extract the subject from its context, or work within the situation one is presented, regarding an image through the lens forces us to temporarily name it and treat it differently.
It is perhaps telling that, regardless how carefully we seek to regulate the background, adjust the lighting and tune the focus, the context can never be eliminated. When we cease looking through the lens, our subject is revealed as it always was, an entity within the wide and wild world of interconnected “things” and relationships.
Wandering Path Arts 