February 22, 2025 • 44 mins
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Our FIRST episode of the World Through Zen Eyes Podcast. We talk about talking, we word about wording. How words in the linguistic zeitgeist have become polemic OR hackneyed and perhaps a better way, instead of "or" is to view it in terms of "and".
Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com
Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
We're going to talk about words.
Words in today's linguisticzeitgeist.
(00:27):
Words have been eitherweaponized...
lost their meaning to frequentthe use, rendering them
completely impotent or havebecome so polemic and so
(00:47):
controversial that one has hisown mouth twisted either in one
direction or another.
And things can either be Theunfortunate thing is that it's
either or.
So it's or this or that.
And in that way it perpetuateskind of warring factions and it
(01:13):
perpetuates further division.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think words in today'sday and age has become a major
trigger.
If you want to get somebody'sblood pressure rising...
SPEAKER_01 (01:28):
There are certain words that will really get them
going.
SPEAKER_00 (01:35):
Yeah, I was recently having this conversation with
myself regarding the use orpotential use.
I didn't analyze that.
Right.
You talked back?
I did talk back.
In your own voice?
In my own voice.
Okay, very good.
Check, cleared that.
Very good.
Yeah, I was weighing.
(02:00):
whether or not it's appropriateor safe or however you want to
call it, the word schizoid.
And again, there's the versionof it where it's a derogatory
term, kind of aimed at peoplewith schizophrenia.
(02:25):
But it's sort of unfairlyhijacked, right?
Because...
There is a word schizoid that'sgot its own life, but it's been
kidnapped and abducted andsomewhere locked up in a
basement of derogatoryterminologies.
And the etymology of it is fromGreek, which sort of means
(02:53):
separate and kind of disjointedand disconnected.
you know so which goes into someof the early theories of
schizophrenia where the mindjust becomes fragmented into a
million different pieces and sodisorganized the individual
doesn't even know what's comingfrom where there's no
consistency you know right andthat sort of fragmented chaotic
(03:16):
element of it and so I had thatsort of conversation with myself
because it was I don't recallanymore what the actual context
of it was going to be, but itwas intended to mean what the
word means.
It was intended to suggest afragmented inconsistency of
(03:42):
something.
And by no means, in my mind, itwas...
tied to schizophrenia or anyderogatory kind of connotation
towards people with mentaldisorder.
But the very fact that I sort ofended up having this
conversation with myself isindicative of something.
(04:04):
This imposed or need for selfcensorship, which isn't to say
one shouldn't, We just don'tshoot off the mouth whatever you
want.
But there's a balance.
(04:27):
And it was kind of aninteresting thought experiment
to sort of look at it.
And I would like to use theword.
I like the word.
for whatever reason, right?
And so...
It rolls off the tongue nicely,right?
Yeah.
And so do you then...
But it has a significant meaningbehind it when used properly.
Right.
(04:47):
Right?
Yeah, because it is...
It's been well thought out.
It's not just something thatthey randomly put together and
said, ah, let's name it this.
No.
Yeah.
And it's that whether...
How to present it in a way...
And we...
automatically do this.
(05:07):
We think of words and we thinkof ways that we express
ourselves and pump our thoughtsout into the universe, trying to
avoid unnecessarily oraccidentally hurting people.
(05:27):
Right, that's the heart ofeverything, right?
Like compassion, havingunderstanding and trying not to
unnecessarily use words with theintention of harming another
individual, right?
Unless the intention is to hurtsomebody.
And then in that case, the useof the word is appropriate,
right?
If the word you're using ismeant to inflict pain, then...
(05:51):
If that's your goal, right?
If that's your goal, then that'sthe thing.
But this is not what I'm talkingabout.
Yeah, you see that all the timewhen you're
SPEAKER_01 (05:55):
driving with those...
people that cut you off and youjust got to observe it.
There's a lot of words beingthrown out there that have
really serious intention to hurtanother person.
SPEAKER_00 (06:06):
Yeah.
So in this dialogue of mine ormonologue, whichever one crosses
me off a...
SPEAKER_01 (06:19):
It goes back and forth.
SPEAKER_00 (06:20):
Dialogue, monologue.
It waxes and wanes.
It's like the tide.
And the thought then was, well,it's not, there's a balance to
be had and one can present adefinition of sort of to clarify
(06:43):
the terms.
Like this is what I mean by thisword.
And it's a thoughtful thing todo because Some people might not
know what the word means, and soyou could define it on a fly,
and the person's like, oh, Ilearned a new word today also.
I'm trying to learn new words asmuch as I can, and sometimes you
(07:07):
can't pick your hand up.
Excuse me, I don't know whatthat word meant, but if you
could kind of glean the meaningfrom the content.
But this idea of, either or, theor as a in-between word, that
the words can be so powerful orso nothing.
(07:40):
And in thinking of that, whatI've arrived at is that the or
has to be changed.
Because it's not, so long asthat or seems to kind of dangle
between those two things, itdoes create a warring state.
(08:02):
It's this versus that.
This one against that.
And...
Tell me about it.
Sit five minutes with me in acouples therapy session and
you'll see a warring state ofwords.
Right.
You'll see how words can reallyinduce a war between two people.
Yeah.
And so within the Zenphilosophy, the idea of, and
(08:22):
it's not only within Zenphilosophy, but this idea of
worlds perfuming other worlds,the multiverse almost that is
present here in front of us andthe vast multitude of realities
intertwined with one another,which makes it not or but end.
(08:49):
So the words are so powerful,and at the same time, at the
same time, nothing.
And...
Superimposed, one on top of theother.
Interwoven.
Yeah, they simultaneously, it'sa very bizarre, and I think
(09:13):
psychologically kind of...
the mind has to think a littlebit because we are accustomed to
a finite arrival at adestination, psychologically,
emotionally.
Like, okay, I'm here.
I cannot be here and theresimultaneously.
The whole of philosophy and theparadigm of life is based in the
(09:38):
physical form.
And so I could sit in this chairor that chair.
I can't sit in both of thesechairs.
So the end, doesn't even arisein the mind.
But we have to understand thatthe mind is not the body in this
context, and that it could beboth, and words can both
(10:00):
simultaneously both exist inthese two different realities,
and one being that they arenothing, and the other being
that they are so powerful.
Because the...
The word pain.
(10:20):
Pain, pain, pain, pain.
Are you in pain?
Stop, stop, stop.
Right?
So hot doesn't burn.
And pain doesn't burn.
For some people, if
SPEAKER_01 (10:30):
I say
SPEAKER_00 (10:30):
balding, ouch.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (10:35):
Right?
If that's something that you'reself-conscious about, then now I
feel pain.
SPEAKER_00 (10:39):
Right.
But the word itself has notinflicted the pain.
UNKNOWN (10:43):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (10:44):
That's the thing, the word itself, bald, does not
refer to pain.
So it's almost like we transformthe word into that pain.
SPEAKER_00 (10:52):
We have that ultimate great superpower.
We are sort of godlike in thatsense.
I was thinking about that.
And it almost follows thisphilosophy where words also have
a beginning, duration, and anend.
So there's the evolution of theword, right?
So when the word is created inthe
SPEAKER_01 (11:07):
furnace deep in the earth, I think the word god's
name is Webster.
The Webster God, when he createdthe word, by the way, I'm dating
myself.
Everyone out there who's from mygeneration surely has seen
Webster's Dictionary.
It was heavy enough to killsomebody.
SPEAKER_00 (11:24):
Yes.
And there was one of them in theclassroom.
And if you wanted to know theword, the good teacher would
say, well, go look it up.
SPEAKER_01 (11:32):
Go look that
SPEAKER_00 (11:33):
up.
And...
The pain of having to look it upmakes you remember it, though.
SPEAKER_01 (11:38):
You don't forget that.
SPEAKER_00 (11:39):
Right, because you're like, I'm not walking
over there and rifling through3,000 pages again, so I better
hold on to that information.
Better remember that.
I'm not doing that twice.
Yeah, so the word transforms andevolves.
The individuals...
Throughout their lifetime canchange the meaning of the word
based on their experiences or Ithink the collective too.
(12:00):
I mean, there's two differentthings.
I think early on
SPEAKER_01 (12:02):
when you first started talking, you're talking
or referring to the collectivewhole and how they're responding
SPEAKER_00 (12:08):
to certain types of words that can trigger people.
But yeah, I think that.
The individual wields a lot of
SPEAKER_01 (12:15):
power.
And when there's a communicationbetween two people, the sounds
are traveling back and forth,right?
But what we can't see, likeyou're talking about, is
SPEAKER_00 (12:24):
what's hidden, right?
What is the world that isoverlapped right here in this
present moment?
On a very basic level, ourthoughts and our feelings, we
can't
SPEAKER_01 (12:34):
see that.
We can, I can tell yousomething.
I can say, hey, where the heckdid you get those sandals from?
Those are really ugly, right?
And then you can make a face,right?
And then I can say to myself,hmm, I think that didn't have a
good impact.
Right?
But in the inside, we don't seethat part.
And then, I just, here's anotherthing that creates a fa-pois
(12:55):
during communication.
I just want you to understandwhat I mean, right?
SPEAKER_00 (12:59):
Right.
You know, that's...
And this is where words...
That creates a lot of...
Yeah, where words fall short.
Rumi's got a splendid littlebit, one of his poems...
And he talks largely of love,but it's the love of the divine
for the most part, kind ofcloaked in the mundane, but
(13:23):
something to the effect of, andthe pen breaks and the paper
kind of wafts away in the wind.
And what he's hinting at is theend of, of the power of language
to communicate.
We contort ourselves so much totry to express our inner worlds.
(13:51):
And we have to acknowledge that,that duality, the and.
The and, yes.
That words can not reallyexpress, and that's all we got,
in a sense.
I mean, action speed, language,and words, and pictures are
(14:11):
worth a thousand words and allof those things, but it's the
primary mode of at least on theconscious level, communication,
because pheromones are moresubtle and more first of a
(14:32):
communication, right?
Very subtle, somebody walks inthe door and before we even kind
of say a word, there it is,there's a whole communication
underway already.
But.
And even body language too,we're processing that too.
Yeah, and so.
Before we even talk.
Those, we could say all thosethings are language and words
(14:56):
and it's true, it's bodylanguage.
But in terms of the use of theWebster's.
Mr.
Webster.
Mr.
Webster.
This episode is sponsored, not,but could be.
It really is this.
Put that
SPEAKER_01 (15:13):
in
SPEAKER_00 (15:13):
a book bag and take a hike.
You'll see how strong your legsget after a few months.
Let me
SPEAKER_01 (15:17):
tell you, that's the ultimate rock weight right
there.
SPEAKER_00 (15:21):
Yeah, and it's the refinement of oneself.
that aims and hopes for beingable to communicate and transmit
our deepest innermost feelingsand emotions.
(15:42):
And try as we may, language,can't, and fall short, right?
And at the same time, what's hisname?
Rumi refers a lot to that,right?
Like you were referring to.
Right, the shortcomings.
Isn't there, I don't rememberexactly, maybe you remember
where he says something like, Ithink this one was talking about
love, and he's talking aboutthere's a field in the beyond.
(16:05):
Ah, yeah, beyond good, beyondright thinking, beyond wrong
thinking, there's a meadow Iwill meet you there.
Wow, that's
SPEAKER_01 (16:12):
very profound.
SPEAKER_00 (16:14):
I say that, I say that, Just the other day, I had
someone come for the Tea withthe Habit.
So it's a kind of a private...
Wonderful program, by the way,for those of you who are
interested.
It is...
You know, we have tea and talk.
And someone was asking...
People don't know what to dowith it.
Sometimes
SPEAKER_01 (16:34):
with words, sometimes with mind.
SPEAKER_00 (16:35):
Right.
And someone was asking, well,what's the protocol?
And I said, well, the protocolis that.
Communicate.
It's in the Rumi-like, you know,Rumi-esque in a sense.
It's let's have tea, like twohuman beings, you know, and what
comes of it.
if we don't try to manufacture.
(16:57):
And I've spoken about thisrecently in one of my talks.
Someone had asked, becausetechnically, if there are no
questions in the Zen culture,the Zen master doesn't speak.
And I saw a meme that said, agreat wise man once said
(17:22):
nothing.
So there is this invitation thatI most of the time give, are
there any questions?
And someone said, I don't have aquestions, but I'm gonna come up
(17:43):
with one.
And that turned into a wholething because the manufactured
questions in this context of Zenand the pursuit in the way that
Zen presents pursuit of truth,of self-knowledge, of wisdom, or
(18:08):
enlightenment, ultimatelyspeaking, the manufactured
questions are false.
They're plastic.
They're not truth.
The way that if someone, youknow, someone comes into the Zen
Center and says, oh, I see thatyou have the abbot's room and I
see they have Dr.
(18:28):
Lambert's office and bathrooms.
And if this is where theirrecount of where they have been
and what they have seen ends,then right away we know, okay,
well, they haven't seen theDharma Hall.
And it's through the journey.
So for people who do the work,In the questions lies also not
(18:57):
only a question but anannouncement of where I've been,
how much work I've done, whathave I seen, and they question
then those new vistas that theyvisit.
So someone could say, oh, youknow, there's a dharma hall.
And then someone else will say,well, have you been to the
kitchen?
Oh, there's a kitchen, I haven'tbeen to the kitchen.
Why?
Because they haven't done thework.
So they haven't seen thekitchen.
(19:18):
And on and on.
It's like, oh, there's a, youknow, there's a cafe.
Yes.
Did you see the lunchroom?
No.
Okay.
So yeah.
And so in the questions, we knowexactly where the student is.
Yeah.
What they've seen, where they'vebeen, what their upcoming
questions may be.
I think maybe the next time thenyou meet and if you have a
(19:39):
conversation and then theyreflect back to their
understanding, then you know,well, after the question, how
much did they dig into how muchdid they retain?
Like you were saying, if theycame and they spoke to you, and
then they went to their friendsand regurgitated
SPEAKER_01 (19:55):
and said, oh, I just saw the abbot's room and I saw
Dr.
Lambert's office, then how muchdid you miss?
Or how much did you not takewith you and process and digest
SPEAKER_00 (20:03):
that?
And so words, again,
SPEAKER_01 (20:07):
are
SPEAKER_00 (20:09):
very powerful.
Because they are the map.
But but they are not theterritory in the Zen context.
So this idea of words beingnothing and being so powerful
(20:30):
really kind of recently capturedmy thinking because it leaves
us, as Zen frequently does,broader than verses.
Verses, Even in the verses, theusual is my position versus your
(20:53):
position.
And the usual is, I know ever somuch more about my position and
not enough about your positionbecause you're, you know, I
mean, if you've read, you know,maybe, I don't know, Miyamoto
Musashi's end of the Book ofFive Rings and, you know, know
thy enemy better than you knowyour friend kind of thing, then
(21:15):
maybe, you know, you're askilled warrior in a sense.
But for the most part, peopledon't do that.
People don't do that.
They, it's confirmation bias.
So, They reinforce their alreadypreexisting notions and points
of views.
And so the versus keeps usensconced in our own little
(21:36):
corner.
And it's a sort of isolationiststate of being.
And then it's also the versus.
pairs it with usually a sheerrefusal to hear the other side
(22:00):
because emotion becomes involvedand forget it.
Forget it.
Don't talk about religion orpolitics because it's so
divisive.
To me, they're one and the same.
Religion and politics.
Politics is religion of thepeople and religiously Adhere to
(22:23):
and violent in that sense.
A comment right there is thatthe mind shuts down and closes
when you have a discussion witha person that has a point of
view outside of your perspectiveor outside of the limitations of
your knowledge.
There's no, what you're tryingto say is, when it's versus,
nobody wants to see the otherperson, the other side.
(22:43):
They just stand their ground andthey die there.
The ego death.
You just die there.
I'm not moving
SPEAKER_01 (22:48):
from this spot,
SPEAKER_00 (22:48):
right?
And if we consider the yin yangor what we in Korean call um
yang, the symbol of the sort ofblack and white fish, if you
will, with that, you know, sothe black fish has the white eye
and the white fish has the blackeye kind of thing.
And nothing, nothing in thislife is entirely comprised of a
(23:14):
position, to which it iscompletely endeared to.
There's always within it anelement of that which one
considers opposition, so thatthe black half of the fish has
the white eye.
If it does not, that isstagnation, and stagnation is
(23:36):
death.
And no element of life has 100%of one kind of element of it.
SPEAKER_01 (23:46):
Can the person open their mind enough to include
that one little piece?
SPEAKER_00 (23:53):
It's very difficult for some people.
And this is where the endbetween these things comes in.
End, right?
End will...
Right, because...
That's a very powerfulconnotation there that's
created, right?
That end is freeing.
It really is.
It's inclusive.
It's opening.
It's broadening.
It's...
(24:14):
Because in as much as a personconsiders their mired position
to be so rigid, it is still, andin fact, unbeknownst to them
frequently, a prison.
(24:35):
There's an encampment that theybelieve that they want to be in
entirely.
But if a thing brings you somuch pain and so much suffering
and so much friction, is itreally what you want on a deep
thing?
Or is it kind of this cult-likething?
Well, I've sold my car and I'vemoved into the mountains and I
(24:58):
wear pants with no zippers and Ican't go back now.
SPEAKER_01 (25:02):
You've made that decision and now you don't want
to disappoint anyone.
I don't want to be a hypocrite.
You just stick to it the wholeway through, no matter how much
pain, suffering, or maybe you
SPEAKER_00 (25:11):
realize this isn't for me, just ride that through.
And it's that kind of, so it'simprisoning.
I think a general term that weuse maybe, let's say, in
psychology or in everydaylanguage is stubbornness.
Stubbornness.
Right?
And I have a great story forthat.
Let me
SPEAKER_01 (25:26):
just tell you about my great-grandfather.
My dad told me this story.
So my great-grandfather hadfarms in Cuba.
One of
SPEAKER_00 (25:32):
the farms was on the beach, and he was there walking
with his friends.
And he says, look over there.
And he points into the beyond,and he says, look at that group
of goats.
And then his friends say...
Wait a minute, over there?
And he says, yeah, yeah, yeah,yeah.
And then two seconds later, theyfly away.
And he says, I think his namewas Jesus.
(25:52):
Jesus, didn't you see?
They flew away.
SPEAKER_01 (25:55):
They can't be goats.
They're pelicans.
And he goes, they might haveflown away, but they were goats.
I was like, my goodness.
I was totally kidding.
Yeah, you're not losing asingle.
You're just not moving from yourpoint.
You will die at that place nomatter what.
Yeah.
I guess I might have inherited alittle
SPEAKER_00 (26:18):
bit of that.
It's a funny story, but it's afunny story on a first telling.
And if you give it an iota ofthought, it's a sad story.
For someone to be so rigid.
I mean...
(26:40):
One of the signs, external signsof death is rigor mortis.
SPEAKER_01 (26:45):
The body is just
SPEAKER_00 (26:46):
stiff and rigid and stubborn.
And even before that, a personwho doesn't do any exercise or
who has a lot of
SPEAKER_01 (26:53):
muscle cramps or arthritis,
SPEAKER_00 (26:54):
it's still,
SPEAKER_01 (26:56):
their muscles are tight, they can't move.
Stubborn, the muscles arestubborn.
The muscles are
SPEAKER_00 (27:02):
stubborn.
Yeah, it's...
What I've experienced within thestudy of Zen, because as we all
are, I think, for the most part,at the beginning of our journey,
intellectually ravenous, I mean,I've read I think anything and
(27:28):
everything that used to be inthat place, that museum place
called the library, rememberthose places?
Where they keep- Some
SPEAKER_01 (27:35):
still do exist.
They're rare.
Rare finds, but yes.
SPEAKER_00 (27:37):
Or bookstores, too.
Where they keep these thingscalled books that you have to go
and go through a catalog andthen go through the Dewey, Dewey
decimal system.
You can't just say, hey, Siri,find this.
Right.
And I think as we all frequentlyare, when interests are peaked,
(27:57):
we become ravenous on the topic.
And this is what my experiencewas.
And I've consumed incessantlywhatever things of topic, of
interest, philosophy, variousreligions, Zen, the scriptures,
(28:20):
the this, the that, And thewhole spectrum of it, from very
dogmatic to very transcendentaland mystical to bordering on
insanity, as many of thephilosophers and those who have
gone down the rabbit hole andhaven't been seen again.
(28:44):
And the experience...
eventually became that we mustunderstand what words really are
and how to see them in a sobersort of wisdom way.
(29:05):
That is to say that they areprovisional.
And when consumed, the wordscreate a world of their own and
we, as my own son-in-law wouldsay, you drown in the book.
you become so fixated on thewords and how they're said and
(29:26):
so precisely that those thingsbecome so much more of the
reality than the reality towhich the words point to.
The map is not the territory,but one could be so deluded that
one begins to think that as thewords describe it, so it is.
(29:49):
Right.
So in other words, maybe byregurgitating something that you
read in the book, you actuallyfeel like you directly
understand the point.
You have the direct experience,right.
So at that point, you were nodifferent than a parrot.
We are all parrots.
I remember one of the firstteachings that Unsanem, Unsanem
is our Zen teacher, gave to uswas, Bring me all the books.
(30:13):
Bring me all the books.
Bring me all
SPEAKER_01 (30:15):
the books.
SPEAKER_00 (30:16):
And he's so kind of cute about it because like, oh,
you know, in his limitedlanguage, in his limited English
language, right?
Oh, what kind of books are youreading?
I'm interested.
You know, and so because, youknow, clearly if you said...
gave me all the books where I'mlike, oh, you know, some
contraband books might have beenstashed and quote unquote
(30:39):
accidentally forgotten, but weso proudly, you know, presented
and I brought my entire libraryof information and it's like, oh
yeah, leave it over there in thecorner of the meditation room,
you know.
And didn't think of it until Ihad forgotten about those books.
(30:59):
And then having forgotten aboutthem, forgotten, and then had a
sort of aha moment at one pointin time.
It's like, wait a second.
I had a library of books that Ileft here that is now missing,
right?
And this was kind of a covertoperation on his side of it to
(31:24):
free me.
Because I don't think at thattime you had the and.
Right.
You had the or.
There was just the or.
At the time I had nothing.
At the time I had the words.
The words were it.
As they were, right?
And, you know, it's interesting.
There's a tea.
Not that long ago I had someonecome for the tea with the abbot.
(31:49):
And I served them omija.
Omija is a, And I don't recallwhat the English name of the,
it's a red berry, and it'sdehydrated.
And when you make tea of it, itrehydrates it, obviously.
But Omija is five-flavor tea.
(32:15):
And when you initially brew it,As the temperature of it
changes, the flavor changes, theflavor profile shifts, right?
So it's simultaneously a littlebit sweet, a little bit salty, a
little bit bigger, a littlebitter, a little tangy, you
know, there's a little umamithing in it, you know, so it's
got this whole experiencedepending on the temperature of
(32:37):
the water, depending on how longyou steep, et cetera, et cetera.
And words, too, have thatquality similar quality that
they could change flavor, right?
And they could change flavordepending on what other words
they're juxtaposed against.
(32:57):
How do you construct yourstatement And you put a word in
the wrong place that is banaland they will then weaponize it,
they will insult, they willwhatever.
So the construct of it makes adifference.
But also with reading andconsuming words, as you change
and you evolve and your eyeopens, because now it's very
(33:20):
interesting.
Because now...
You can consume
SPEAKER_01 (33:24):
books.
Back then, the teaching was, andagain, this is so Zen, right?
As you evolve, the same nobecomes an okay or a yes, right?
Because your eye, a wisdom isopen.
Now, you're not just consumingthose words as a prison, like
maybe it was back then, that
SPEAKER_00 (33:42):
would...
obstruct your development I wasjust thinking like as a metaphor
like early on you're veryexcited about something right so
you just consume recklessly likesomeone let's say reads a
SPEAKER_01 (33:53):
mushrooms are good for you and so you just you're
an amateur you got into theforest and you just eat consume
all the mushrooms all themushrooms you'll end up dead or
tripping that'll be the lastmushroom trip you've been on
right but then you know you gointo a course you study with
someone who's an herbalist
SPEAKER_00 (34:09):
now you know how to describe You know, I have this,
this is what I can use.
When, why, that I.
The nuance.
The nuance.
Early on in someone's journey,they don't have that nuance.
You know, I'm almost sort ofleaning towards saying that in
the youth of our spiritualgrowth, I was consumed by books.
(34:35):
Even though I said I've consumedeverything, they've consumed me.
And I have lost myself to them.
And in reading of certainthings, and we like to say that
I've lost myself in the book.
I've been transported to anotherworld and experience and kind of
(34:58):
travel that romanticized kind ofthing, which is nice.
Yeah.
allow oneself to kind of takeflight of imagination, yet one
must be cautious so that itdoesn't become such a reality
that everything becomes in thatsame vein, that what I have read
(35:21):
must be like, okay, omija tea issweet.
When?
When?
And if you haven't had, howsweet?
If the tongue hasn't tasted it.
Yeah.
And so that flavor profile ofwords shifts and changes
depending on various aspects.
And then of course we also, wedon't, we use the words, even
(35:49):
though Mr.
Webster had suggested that themeaning of the word is this.
But we use it, according to ourown dictionary, what the word
means to me.
And then the other persondoesn't know what the word means
to me.
And so then they hear it onaccount of what that word means
(36:11):
to them.
Oh boy, let me tell you a storyrelated to that.
And you were there for
SPEAKER_02 (36:16):
that.
SPEAKER_01 (36:17):
So when I was in Rutgers, I made friends with
some girl, her name was Ingrid,and she was telling me how she
had a baby.
She lived on Bush Campus.
And she asked me one day afterclass, hey, can you help me move
the crib?
I was like, sure, I felt so bad,right?
Right, yes.
She's living by herself.
She has a baby.
She can't pick up the crib.
(36:37):
I was like, so I call up myfriend, Younghan, and I was
like, hey, this is going to befast.
We're just moving the crib.
We're just going to go move thecrib from one room to the next.
And let me tell you, talkingabout what the word means to
them versus what the word meansto me.
That was a huge gap, wider thanthe Grand Canyon there, because
when we got there, to oursurprise, what was it?
(36:59):
The crib.
The crib.
The actual crib.
And
SPEAKER_00 (37:03):
those of you who are not of the era, the crib...
is a house.
The whole
SPEAKER_01 (37:12):
house.
SPEAKER_00 (37:14):
Our five minute journey turned
SPEAKER_01 (37:15):
into like four hours.
SPEAKER_00 (37:16):
We thought it was going to be a crib, but it was
the
SPEAKER_01 (37:19):
crib.
SPEAKER_00 (37:20):
So move the whole house as opposed to one piece of
furniture for the child, which,you know, you make an assumption
of being small.
Yeah, it's that.
It absolutely is.
We hear...
the words according to our innerdictionary.
And it's filtered also.
(37:42):
To match.
And in couples therapy, that'swhat comes up.
That's not what I meant.
Well, you said you hated me.
But that's not what I meant.
I don't mean, I don't meant likeI hated you.
I just, I was, you know, hatedthe moment.
I didn't hate you.
That one
SPEAKER_01 (38:01):
particular
SPEAKER_00 (38:01):
thing.
Right.
You know.
But then for some
SPEAKER_01 (38:03):
reason, like you hate me completely.
And so many times I'll be like,all right, I'm done with you
then.
Yeah.
And then after some processing,it was like, it was that one
specific moment when you
SPEAKER_00 (38:12):
did this one specific thing.
Yeah.
It's...
That happens all the time.
It's amorphous.
The words, how they areconceived of...
in the mind, how they arebirthed into the world, and
who's doing the child rearing,they're completely different
(38:33):
realms.
And and is a helpful thing,because and includes all those
three.
It includes how the word isconceived inside my mind.
It includes, and includes themeaning that I, intent for the
word to mean, and it includesthe potential for the other
(38:58):
person to understand itdifferently, completely
differently.
And there's a door for freedom,too, if you need to use the
eject button.
The and allows it, the andallows that.
There's a word, And I can'tconjure up now.
(39:22):
But it's one of those magicalwords that has- Super
cagifragilistic, espialidocious?
Not that one.
I'm dating myself for thesethings.
There's a word that has twomeanings, but in a very unique
fashion, they're very oppositemeanings.
(39:48):
And I can't, for the life of me,Oh, the English language has a
bunch of those homophones andhomonyms and things like that.
Words like here and here, howyou spell it, bear and bear.
One letter changes the wholemeaning, and sometimes it's even
spelled the same and the meaningis different, and that's where
you have to look at the context.
Cleave.
(40:09):
Cleave, okay.
Cleave as in to split apart andseparate, and cleave as in to
attach and hold on to.
I cleave to this, right?
And so if you just throw it outthere, cleave.
Just on the nature of it.
Hey, can you cleave this?
What do you mean?
Do you want me to cut it off ordo you want me to glue it?
(40:29):
Can
SPEAKER_01 (40:29):
you see how this can create a complete, like if a
parent tells a kid or anemployer tells an employee, hey,
can you cleave that?
Right.
And then you come back and youwanted it to be sewn together
and they
SPEAKER_00 (40:40):
cut it.
They're separated.
That can
SPEAKER_01 (40:42):
just create a disaster.
SPEAKER_00 (40:44):
That's right.
Words are...
provisional, they are to pointto a reality, and they are to
communicate, and they have thisdual, as so much in this world
(41:07):
does, this is not any newsreally, I think, to a
thought-out mind.
We live in a world of duality.
Coin has two sides.
Well, technically, some people,nitpicky will say it has three
sides.
And I forget what the edge is,but there's a name for it.
(41:29):
But they understand the point.
And this idea of that words arenothing.
Because they...
don't actually hurt.
The word pain and fire don'tburn and wet doesn't moisten
anything.
And yet, at the same time, thewords can cripple a person.
(41:56):
Destroy.
Destroy and obliterate and scarfor life.
Understanding and spreading themind to encompass that complete
reality of the duality as notensconced in one side and the
other, not mired here and there,not kind of divided between here
(42:18):
and there, but as a end.
Yeah.
I'm gonna make a big statement.
It's the word for peace.
End.
My view, end.
your view, my position, and yourposition.
(42:40):
Not this blackmail thing or notthis terrorist sort of thing,
mine or yours.
Open your hearts to thepossibility of and.
(43:01):
Put and in between words.
Make it inclusive.
Make it less divisive.
Unite.
Cleave.
Watch one.
Cleave.
Yeah.
I think be patient enough to seepast your perspective and your
(43:25):
point of view, right?
Whatever topic you're talkingabout, I oftentimes tell people,
well, if you're talking about anelephant, you have to really try
to think Are you standing at themountaintop or are you in the
valley?
And where is the elephant?
Because where you stand andwhere the elephant is completely
changes the perspective, right?
At the mountaintop, it's thesize of your thumb.
(43:46):
This is patience.
I think that sounds like a goodtopic for the next podcast.
Patience.
Patience.
What is it?
Many people say it's good,
SPEAKER_01 (43:57):
but then they tell me afterwards, but
SPEAKER_00 (43:58):
I don't
SPEAKER_01 (43:59):
have any of
SPEAKER_00 (43:59):
it.
Right.
What is it?
Patience.
How about that?
Next time.
Patience.
Here on The World Through ZenEyes.
Until then.
Until then.
Take care of yourselves and eachother.
We're going to talk about words.
Words in today's linguisticzeitgeist.
(00:27):
Words have been eitherweaponized...
lost their meaning to frequentthe use, rendering them
completely impotent or havebecome so polemic and so
(00:47):
controversial that one has hisown mouth twisted either in one
direction or another.
And things can either be Theunfortunate thing is that it's
either or.
So it's or this or that.
And in that way it perpetuateskind of warring factions and it
(01:13):
perpetuates further division.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think words in today'sday and age has become a major
trigger.
If you want to get somebody'sblood pressure rising...
SPEAKER_01 (01:28):
There are certain words that will really get them
going.
SPEAKER_00 (01:35):
Yeah, I was recently having this conversation with
myself regarding the use orpotential use.
I didn't analyze that.
Right.
You talked back?
I did talk back.
In your own voice?
In my own voice.
Okay, very good.
Check, cleared that.
Very good.
Yeah, I was weighing.
(02:00):
whether or not it's appropriateor safe or however you want to
call it, the word schizoid.
And again, there's the versionof it where it's a derogatory
term, kind of aimed at peoplewith schizophrenia.
(02:25):
But it's sort of unfairlyhijacked, right?
Because...
There is a word schizoid that'sgot its own life, but it's been
kidnapped and abducted andsomewhere locked up in a
basement of derogatoryterminologies.
And the etymology of it is fromGreek, which sort of means
(02:53):
separate and kind of disjointedand disconnected.
you know so which goes into someof the early theories of
schizophrenia where the mindjust becomes fragmented into a
million different pieces and sodisorganized the individual
doesn't even know what's comingfrom where there's no
consistency you know right andthat sort of fragmented chaotic
(03:16):
element of it and so I had thatsort of conversation with myself
because it was I don't recallanymore what the actual context
of it was going to be, but itwas intended to mean what the
word means.
It was intended to suggest afragmented inconsistency of
(03:42):
something.
And by no means, in my mind, itwas...
tied to schizophrenia or anyderogatory kind of connotation
towards people with mentaldisorder.
But the very fact that I sort ofended up having this
conversation with myself isindicative of something.
(04:04):
This imposed or need for selfcensorship, which isn't to say
one shouldn't, We just don'tshoot off the mouth whatever you
want.
But there's a balance.
(04:27):
And it was kind of aninteresting thought experiment
to sort of look at it.
And I would like to use theword.
I like the word.
for whatever reason, right?
And so...
It rolls off the tongue nicely,right?
Yeah.
And so do you then...
But it has a significant meaningbehind it when used properly.
Right.
(04:47):
Right?
Yeah, because it is...
It's been well thought out.
It's not just something thatthey randomly put together and
said, ah, let's name it this.
No.
Yeah.
And it's that whether...
How to present it in a way...
And we...
automatically do this.
(05:07):
We think of words and we thinkof ways that we express
ourselves and pump our thoughtsout into the universe, trying to
avoid unnecessarily oraccidentally hurting people.
(05:27):
Right, that's the heart ofeverything, right?
Like compassion, havingunderstanding and trying not to
unnecessarily use words with theintention of harming another
individual, right?
Unless the intention is to hurtsomebody.
And then in that case, the useof the word is appropriate,
right?
If the word you're using ismeant to inflict pain, then...
(05:51):
If that's your goal, right?
If that's your goal, then that'sthe thing.
But this is not what I'm talkingabout.
Yeah, you see that all the timewhen you're
SPEAKER_01 (05:55):
driving with those...
people that cut you off and youjust got to observe it.
There's a lot of words beingthrown out there that have
really serious intention to hurtanother person.
SPEAKER_00 (06:06):
Yeah.
So in this dialogue of mine ormonologue, whichever one crosses
me off a...
SPEAKER_01 (06:19):
It goes back and forth.
SPEAKER_00 (06:20):
Dialogue, monologue.
It waxes and wanes.
It's like the tide.
And the thought then was, well,it's not, there's a balance to
be had and one can present adefinition of sort of to clarify
(06:43):
the terms.
Like this is what I mean by thisword.
And it's a thoughtful thing todo because Some people might not
know what the word means, and soyou could define it on a fly,
and the person's like, oh, Ilearned a new word today also.
I'm trying to learn new words asmuch as I can, and sometimes you
(07:07):
can't pick your hand up.
Excuse me, I don't know whatthat word meant, but if you
could kind of glean the meaningfrom the content.
But this idea of, either or, theor as a in-between word, that
the words can be so powerful orso nothing.
(07:40):
And in thinking of that, whatI've arrived at is that the or
has to be changed.
Because it's not, so long asthat or seems to kind of dangle
between those two things, itdoes create a warring state.
(08:02):
It's this versus that.
This one against that.
And...
Tell me about it.
Sit five minutes with me in acouples therapy session and
you'll see a warring state ofwords.
Right.
You'll see how words can reallyinduce a war between two people.
Yeah.
And so within the Zenphilosophy, the idea of, and
(08:22):
it's not only within Zenphilosophy, but this idea of
worlds perfuming other worlds,the multiverse almost that is
present here in front of us andthe vast multitude of realities
intertwined with one another,which makes it not or but end.
(08:49):
So the words are so powerful,and at the same time, at the
same time, nothing.
And...
Superimposed, one on top of theother.
Interwoven.
Yeah, they simultaneously, it'sa very bizarre, and I think
(09:13):
psychologically kind of...
the mind has to think a littlebit because we are accustomed to
a finite arrival at adestination, psychologically,
emotionally.
Like, okay, I'm here.
I cannot be here and theresimultaneously.
The whole of philosophy and theparadigm of life is based in the
(09:38):
physical form.
And so I could sit in this chairor that chair.
I can't sit in both of thesechairs.
So the end, doesn't even arisein the mind.
But we have to understand thatthe mind is not the body in this
context, and that it could beboth, and words can both
(10:00):
simultaneously both exist inthese two different realities,
and one being that they arenothing, and the other being
that they are so powerful.
Because the...
The word pain.
(10:20):
Pain, pain, pain, pain.
Are you in pain?
Stop, stop, stop.
Right?
So hot doesn't burn.
And pain doesn't burn.
For some people, if
SPEAKER_01 (10:30):
I say
SPEAKER_00 (10:30):
balding, ouch.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (10:35):
Right?
If that's something that you'reself-conscious about, then now I
feel pain.
SPEAKER_00 (10:39):
Right.
But the word itself has notinflicted the pain.
UNKNOWN (10:43):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (10:44):
That's the thing, the word itself, bald, does not
refer to pain.
So it's almost like we transformthe word into that pain.
SPEAKER_00 (10:52):
We have that ultimate great superpower.
We are sort of godlike in thatsense.
I was thinking about that.
And it almost follows thisphilosophy where words also have
a beginning, duration, and anend.
So there's the evolution of theword, right?
So when the word is created inthe
SPEAKER_01 (11:07):
furnace deep in the earth, I think the word god's
name is Webster.
The Webster God, when he createdthe word, by the way, I'm dating
myself.
Everyone out there who's from mygeneration surely has seen
Webster's Dictionary.
It was heavy enough to killsomebody.
SPEAKER_00 (11:24):
Yes.
And there was one of them in theclassroom.
And if you wanted to know theword, the good teacher would
say, well, go look it up.
SPEAKER_01 (11:32):
Go look that
SPEAKER_00 (11:33):
up.
And...
The pain of having to look it upmakes you remember it, though.
SPEAKER_01 (11:38):
You don't forget that.
SPEAKER_00 (11:39):
Right, because you're like, I'm not walking
over there and rifling through3,000 pages again, so I better
hold on to that information.
Better remember that.
I'm not doing that twice.
Yeah, so the word transforms andevolves.
The individuals...
Throughout their lifetime canchange the meaning of the word
based on their experiences or Ithink the collective too.
(12:00):
I mean, there's two differentthings.
I think early on
SPEAKER_01 (12:02):
when you first started talking, you're talking
or referring to the collectivewhole and how they're responding
SPEAKER_00 (12:08):
to certain types of words that can trigger people.
But yeah, I think that.
The individual wields a lot of
SPEAKER_01 (12:15):
power.
And when there's a communicationbetween two people, the sounds
are traveling back and forth,right?
But what we can't see, likeyou're talking about, is
SPEAKER_00 (12:24):
what's hidden, right?
What is the world that isoverlapped right here in this
present moment?
On a very basic level, ourthoughts and our feelings, we
can't
SPEAKER_01 (12:34):
see that.
We can, I can tell yousomething.
I can say, hey, where the heckdid you get those sandals from?
Those are really ugly, right?
And then you can make a face,right?
And then I can say to myself,hmm, I think that didn't have a
good impact.
Right?
But in the inside, we don't seethat part.
And then, I just, here's anotherthing that creates a fa-pois
(12:55):
during communication.
I just want you to understandwhat I mean, right?
SPEAKER_00 (12:59):
Right.
You know, that's...
And this is where words...
That creates a lot of...
Yeah, where words fall short.
Rumi's got a splendid littlebit, one of his poems...
And he talks largely of love,but it's the love of the divine
for the most part, kind ofcloaked in the mundane, but
(13:23):
something to the effect of, andthe pen breaks and the paper
kind of wafts away in the wind.
And what he's hinting at is theend of, of the power of language
to communicate.
We contort ourselves so much totry to express our inner worlds.
(13:51):
And we have to acknowledge that,that duality, the and.
The and, yes.
That words can not reallyexpress, and that's all we got,
in a sense.
I mean, action speed, language,and words, and pictures are
(14:11):
worth a thousand words and allof those things, but it's the
primary mode of at least on theconscious level, communication,
because pheromones are moresubtle and more first of a
(14:32):
communication, right?
Very subtle, somebody walks inthe door and before we even kind
of say a word, there it is,there's a whole communication
underway already.
But.
And even body language too,we're processing that too.
Yeah, and so.
Before we even talk.
Those, we could say all thosethings are language and words
(14:56):
and it's true, it's bodylanguage.
But in terms of the use of theWebster's.
Mr.
Webster.
Mr.
Webster.
This episode is sponsored, not,but could be.
It really is this.
Put that
SPEAKER_01 (15:13):
in
SPEAKER_00 (15:13):
a book bag and take a hike.
You'll see how strong your legsget after a few months.
Let me
SPEAKER_01 (15:17):
tell you, that's the ultimate rock weight right
there.
SPEAKER_00 (15:21):
Yeah, and it's the refinement of oneself.
that aims and hopes for beingable to communicate and transmit
our deepest innermost feelingsand emotions.
(15:42):
And try as we may, language,can't, and fall short, right?
And at the same time, what's hisname?
Rumi refers a lot to that,right?
Like you were referring to.
Right, the shortcomings.
Isn't there, I don't rememberexactly, maybe you remember
where he says something like, Ithink this one was talking about
love, and he's talking aboutthere's a field in the beyond.
(16:05):
Ah, yeah, beyond good, beyondright thinking, beyond wrong
thinking, there's a meadow Iwill meet you there.
Wow, that's
SPEAKER_01 (16:12):
very profound.
SPEAKER_00 (16:14):
I say that, I say that, Just the other day, I had
someone come for the Tea withthe Habit.
So it's a kind of a private...
Wonderful program, by the way,for those of you who are
interested.
It is...
You know, we have tea and talk.
And someone was asking...
People don't know what to dowith it.
Sometimes
SPEAKER_01 (16:34):
with words, sometimes with mind.
SPEAKER_00 (16:35):
Right.
And someone was asking, well,what's the protocol?
And I said, well, the protocolis that.
Communicate.
It's in the Rumi-like, you know,Rumi-esque in a sense.
It's let's have tea, like twohuman beings, you know, and what
comes of it.
if we don't try to manufacture.
(16:57):
And I've spoken about thisrecently in one of my talks.
Someone had asked, becausetechnically, if there are no
questions in the Zen culture,the Zen master doesn't speak.
And I saw a meme that said, agreat wise man once said
(17:22):
nothing.
So there is this invitation thatI most of the time give, are
there any questions?
And someone said, I don't have aquestions, but I'm gonna come up
(17:43):
with one.
And that turned into a wholething because the manufactured
questions in this context of Zenand the pursuit in the way that
Zen presents pursuit of truth,of self-knowledge, of wisdom, or
(18:08):
enlightenment, ultimatelyspeaking, the manufactured
questions are false.
They're plastic.
They're not truth.
The way that if someone, youknow, someone comes into the Zen
Center and says, oh, I see thatyou have the abbot's room and I
see they have Dr.
(18:28):
Lambert's office and bathrooms.
And if this is where theirrecount of where they have been
and what they have seen ends,then right away we know, okay,
well, they haven't seen theDharma Hall.
And it's through the journey.
So for people who do the work,In the questions lies also not
(18:57):
only a question but anannouncement of where I've been,
how much work I've done, whathave I seen, and they question
then those new vistas that theyvisit.
So someone could say, oh, youknow, there's a dharma hall.
And then someone else will say,well, have you been to the
kitchen?
Oh, there's a kitchen, I haven'tbeen to the kitchen.
Why?
Because they haven't done thework.
So they haven't seen thekitchen.
(19:18):
And on and on.
It's like, oh, there's a, youknow, there's a cafe.
Yes.
Did you see the lunchroom?
No.
Okay.
So yeah.
And so in the questions, we knowexactly where the student is.
Yeah.
What they've seen, where they'vebeen, what their upcoming
questions may be.
I think maybe the next time thenyou meet and if you have a
(19:39):
conversation and then theyreflect back to their
understanding, then you know,well, after the question, how
much did they dig into how muchdid they retain?
Like you were saying, if theycame and they spoke to you, and
then they went to their friendsand regurgitated
SPEAKER_01 (19:55):
and said, oh, I just saw the abbot's room and I saw
Dr.
Lambert's office, then how muchdid you miss?
Or how much did you not takewith you and process and digest
SPEAKER_00 (20:03):
that?
And so words, again,
SPEAKER_01 (20:07):
are
SPEAKER_00 (20:09):
very powerful.
Because they are the map.
But but they are not theterritory in the Zen context.
So this idea of words beingnothing and being so powerful
(20:30):
really kind of recently capturedmy thinking because it leaves
us, as Zen frequently does,broader than verses.
Verses, Even in the verses, theusual is my position versus your
(20:53):
position.
And the usual is, I know ever somuch more about my position and
not enough about your positionbecause you're, you know, I
mean, if you've read, you know,maybe, I don't know, Miyamoto
Musashi's end of the Book ofFive Rings and, you know, know
thy enemy better than you knowyour friend kind of thing, then
(21:15):
maybe, you know, you're askilled warrior in a sense.
But for the most part, peopledon't do that.
People don't do that.
They, it's confirmation bias.
So, They reinforce their alreadypreexisting notions and points
of views.
And so the versus keeps usensconced in our own little
(21:36):
corner.
And it's a sort of isolationiststate of being.
And then it's also the versus.
pairs it with usually a sheerrefusal to hear the other side
(22:00):
because emotion becomes involvedand forget it.
Forget it.
Don't talk about religion orpolitics because it's so
divisive.
To me, they're one and the same.
Religion and politics.
Politics is religion of thepeople and religiously Adhere to
(22:23):
and violent in that sense.
A comment right there is thatthe mind shuts down and closes
when you have a discussion witha person that has a point of
view outside of your perspectiveor outside of the limitations of
your knowledge.
There's no, what you're tryingto say is, when it's versus,
nobody wants to see the otherperson, the other side.
(22:43):
They just stand their ground andthey die there.
The ego death.
You just die there.
I'm not moving
SPEAKER_01 (22:48):
from this spot,
SPEAKER_00 (22:48):
right?
And if we consider the yin yangor what we in Korean call um
yang, the symbol of the sort ofblack and white fish, if you
will, with that, you know, sothe black fish has the white eye
and the white fish has the blackeye kind of thing.
And nothing, nothing in thislife is entirely comprised of a
(23:14):
position, to which it iscompletely endeared to.
There's always within it anelement of that which one
considers opposition, so thatthe black half of the fish has
the white eye.
If it does not, that isstagnation, and stagnation is
(23:36):
death.
And no element of life has 100%of one kind of element of it.
SPEAKER_01 (23:46):
Can the person open their mind enough to include
that one little piece?
SPEAKER_00 (23:53):
It's very difficult for some people.
And this is where the endbetween these things comes in.
End, right?
End will...
Right, because...
That's a very powerfulconnotation there that's
created, right?
That end is freeing.
It really is.
It's inclusive.
It's opening.
It's broadening.
It's...
(24:14):
Because in as much as a personconsiders their mired position
to be so rigid, it is still, andin fact, unbeknownst to them
frequently, a prison.
(24:35):
There's an encampment that theybelieve that they want to be in
entirely.
But if a thing brings you somuch pain and so much suffering
and so much friction, is itreally what you want on a deep
thing?
Or is it kind of this cult-likething?
Well, I've sold my car and I'vemoved into the mountains and I
(24:58):
wear pants with no zippers and Ican't go back now.
SPEAKER_01 (25:02):
You've made that decision and now you don't want
to disappoint anyone.
I don't want to be a hypocrite.
You just stick to it the wholeway through, no matter how much
pain, suffering, or maybe you
SPEAKER_00 (25:11):
realize this isn't for me, just ride that through.
And it's that kind of, so it'simprisoning.
I think a general term that weuse maybe, let's say, in
psychology or in everydaylanguage is stubbornness.
Stubbornness.
Right?
And I have a great story forthat.
Let me
SPEAKER_01 (25:26):
just tell you about my great-grandfather.
My dad told me this story.
So my great-grandfather hadfarms in Cuba.
One of
SPEAKER_00 (25:32):
the farms was on the beach, and he was there walking
with his friends.
And he says, look over there.
And he points into the beyond,and he says, look at that group
of goats.
And then his friends say...
Wait a minute, over there?
And he says, yeah, yeah, yeah,yeah.
And then two seconds later, theyfly away.
And he says, I think his namewas Jesus.
(25:52):
Jesus, didn't you see?
They flew away.
SPEAKER_01 (25:55):
They can't be goats.
They're pelicans.
And he goes, they might haveflown away, but they were goats.
I was like, my goodness.
I was totally kidding.
Yeah, you're not losing asingle.
You're just not moving from yourpoint.
You will die at that place nomatter what.
Yeah.
I guess I might have inherited alittle
SPEAKER_00 (26:18):
bit of that.
It's a funny story, but it's afunny story on a first telling.
And if you give it an iota ofthought, it's a sad story.
For someone to be so rigid.
I mean...
(26:40):
One of the signs, external signsof death is rigor mortis.
SPEAKER_01 (26:45):
The body is just
SPEAKER_00 (26:46):
stiff and rigid and stubborn.
And even before that, a personwho doesn't do any exercise or
who has a lot of
SPEAKER_01 (26:53):
muscle cramps or arthritis,
SPEAKER_00 (26:54):
it's still,
SPEAKER_01 (26:56):
their muscles are tight, they can't move.
Stubborn, the muscles arestubborn.
The muscles are
SPEAKER_00 (27:02):
stubborn.
Yeah, it's...
What I've experienced within thestudy of Zen, because as we all
are, I think, for the most part,at the beginning of our journey,
intellectually ravenous, I mean,I've read I think anything and
(27:28):
everything that used to be inthat place, that museum place
called the library, rememberthose places?
Where they keep- Some
SPEAKER_01 (27:35):
still do exist.
They're rare.
Rare finds, but yes.
SPEAKER_00 (27:37):
Or bookstores, too.
Where they keep these thingscalled books that you have to go
and go through a catalog andthen go through the Dewey, Dewey
decimal system.
You can't just say, hey, Siri,find this.
Right.
And I think as we all frequentlyare, when interests are peaked,
(27:57):
we become ravenous on the topic.
And this is what my experiencewas.
And I've consumed incessantlywhatever things of topic, of
interest, philosophy, variousreligions, Zen, the scriptures,
(28:20):
the this, the that, And thewhole spectrum of it, from very
dogmatic to very transcendentaland mystical to bordering on
insanity, as many of thephilosophers and those who have
gone down the rabbit hole andhaven't been seen again.
(28:44):
And the experience...
eventually became that we mustunderstand what words really are
and how to see them in a sobersort of wisdom way.
(29:05):
That is to say that they areprovisional.
And when consumed, the wordscreate a world of their own and
we, as my own son-in-law wouldsay, you drown in the book.
you become so fixated on thewords and how they're said and
(29:26):
so precisely that those thingsbecome so much more of the
reality than the reality towhich the words point to.
The map is not the territory,but one could be so deluded that
one begins to think that as thewords describe it, so it is.
(29:49):
Right.
So in other words, maybe byregurgitating something that you
read in the book, you actuallyfeel like you directly
understand the point.
You have the direct experience,right.
So at that point, you were nodifferent than a parrot.
We are all parrots.
I remember one of the firstteachings that Unsanem, Unsanem
is our Zen teacher, gave to uswas, Bring me all the books.
(30:13):
Bring me all the books.
Bring me all
SPEAKER_01 (30:15):
the books.
SPEAKER_00 (30:16):
And he's so kind of cute about it because like, oh,
you know, in his limitedlanguage, in his limited English
language, right?
Oh, what kind of books are youreading?
I'm interested.
You know, and so because, youknow, clearly if you said...
gave me all the books where I'mlike, oh, you know, some
contraband books might have beenstashed and quote unquote
(30:39):
accidentally forgotten, but weso proudly, you know, presented
and I brought my entire libraryof information and it's like, oh
yeah, leave it over there in thecorner of the meditation room,
you know.
And didn't think of it until Ihad forgotten about those books.
(30:59):
And then having forgotten aboutthem, forgotten, and then had a
sort of aha moment at one pointin time.
It's like, wait a second.
I had a library of books that Ileft here that is now missing,
right?
And this was kind of a covertoperation on his side of it to
(31:24):
free me.
Because I don't think at thattime you had the and.
Right.
You had the or.
There was just the or.
At the time I had nothing.
At the time I had the words.
The words were it.
As they were, right?
And, you know, it's interesting.
There's a tea.
Not that long ago I had someonecome for the tea with the abbot.
(31:49):
And I served them omija.
Omija is a, And I don't recallwhat the English name of the,
it's a red berry, and it'sdehydrated.
And when you make tea of it, itrehydrates it, obviously.
But Omija is five-flavor tea.
(32:15):
And when you initially brew it,As the temperature of it
changes, the flavor changes, theflavor profile shifts, right?
So it's simultaneously a littlebit sweet, a little bit salty, a
little bit bigger, a littlebitter, a little tangy, you
know, there's a little umamithing in it, you know, so it's
got this whole experiencedepending on the temperature of
(32:37):
the water, depending on how longyou steep, et cetera, et cetera.
And words, too, have thatquality similar quality that
they could change flavor, right?
And they could change flavordepending on what other words
they're juxtaposed against.
(32:57):
How do you construct yourstatement And you put a word in
the wrong place that is banaland they will then weaponize it,
they will insult, they willwhatever.
So the construct of it makes adifference.
But also with reading andconsuming words, as you change
and you evolve and your eyeopens, because now it's very
(33:20):
interesting.
Because now...
You can consume
SPEAKER_01 (33:24):
books.
Back then, the teaching was, andagain, this is so Zen, right?
As you evolve, the same nobecomes an okay or a yes, right?
Because your eye, a wisdom isopen.
Now, you're not just consumingthose words as a prison, like
maybe it was back then, that
SPEAKER_00 (33:42):
would...
obstruct your development I wasjust thinking like as a metaphor
like early on you're veryexcited about something right so
you just consume recklessly likesomeone let's say reads a
SPEAKER_01 (33:53):
mushrooms are good for you and so you just you're
an amateur you got into theforest and you just eat consume
all the mushrooms all themushrooms you'll end up dead or
tripping that'll be the lastmushroom trip you've been on
right but then you know you gointo a course you study with
someone who's an herbalist
SPEAKER_00 (34:09):
now you know how to describe You know, I have this,
this is what I can use.
When, why, that I.
The nuance.
The nuance.
Early on in someone's journey,they don't have that nuance.
You know, I'm almost sort ofleaning towards saying that in
the youth of our spiritualgrowth, I was consumed by books.
(34:35):
Even though I said I've consumedeverything, they've consumed me.
And I have lost myself to them.
And in reading of certainthings, and we like to say that
I've lost myself in the book.
I've been transported to anotherworld and experience and kind of
(34:58):
travel that romanticized kind ofthing, which is nice.
Yeah.
allow oneself to kind of takeflight of imagination, yet one
must be cautious so that itdoesn't become such a reality
that everything becomes in thatsame vein, that what I have read
(35:21):
must be like, okay, omija tea issweet.
When?
When?
And if you haven't had, howsweet?
If the tongue hasn't tasted it.
Yeah.
And so that flavor profile ofwords shifts and changes
depending on various aspects.
And then of course we also, wedon't, we use the words, even
(35:49):
though Mr.
Webster had suggested that themeaning of the word is this.
But we use it, according to ourown dictionary, what the word
means to me.
And then the other persondoesn't know what the word means
to me.
And so then they hear it onaccount of what that word means
(36:11):
to them.
Oh boy, let me tell you a storyrelated to that.
And you were there for
SPEAKER_02 (36:16):
that.
SPEAKER_01 (36:17):
So when I was in Rutgers, I made friends with
some girl, her name was Ingrid,and she was telling me how she
had a baby.
She lived on Bush Campus.
And she asked me one day afterclass, hey, can you help me move
the crib?
I was like, sure, I felt so bad,right?
Right, yes.
She's living by herself.
She has a baby.
She can't pick up the crib.
(36:37):
I was like, so I call up myfriend, Younghan, and I was
like, hey, this is going to befast.
We're just moving the crib.
We're just going to go move thecrib from one room to the next.
And let me tell you, talkingabout what the word means to
them versus what the word meansto me.
That was a huge gap, wider thanthe Grand Canyon there, because
when we got there, to oursurprise, what was it?
(36:59):
The crib.
The crib.
The actual crib.
And
SPEAKER_00 (37:03):
those of you who are not of the era, the crib...
is a house.
The whole
SPEAKER_01 (37:12):
house.
SPEAKER_00 (37:14):
Our five minute journey turned
SPEAKER_01 (37:15):
into like four hours.
SPEAKER_00 (37:16):
We thought it was going to be a crib, but it was
the
SPEAKER_01 (37:19):
crib.
SPEAKER_00 (37:20):
So move the whole house as opposed to one piece of
furniture for the child, which,you know, you make an assumption
of being small.
Yeah, it's that.
It absolutely is.
We hear...
the words according to our innerdictionary.
And it's filtered also.
(37:42):
To match.
And in couples therapy, that'swhat comes up.
That's not what I meant.
Well, you said you hated me.
But that's not what I meant.
I don't mean, I don't meant likeI hated you.
I just, I was, you know, hatedthe moment.
I didn't hate you.
That one
SPEAKER_01 (38:01):
particular
SPEAKER_00 (38:01):
thing.
Right.
You know.
But then for some
SPEAKER_01 (38:03):
reason, like you hate me completely.
And so many times I'll be like,all right, I'm done with you
then.
Yeah.
And then after some processing,it was like, it was that one
specific moment when you
SPEAKER_00 (38:12):
did this one specific thing.
Yeah.
It's...
That happens all the time.
It's amorphous.
The words, how they areconceived of...
in the mind, how they arebirthed into the world, and
who's doing the child rearing,they're completely different
(38:33):
realms.
And and is a helpful thing,because and includes all those
three.
It includes how the word isconceived inside my mind.
It includes, and includes themeaning that I, intent for the
word to mean, and it includesthe potential for the other
(38:58):
person to understand itdifferently, completely
differently.
And there's a door for freedom,too, if you need to use the
eject button.
The and allows it, the andallows that.
There's a word, And I can'tconjure up now.
(39:22):
But it's one of those magicalwords that has- Super
cagifragilistic, espialidocious?
Not that one.
I'm dating myself for thesethings.
There's a word that has twomeanings, but in a very unique
fashion, they're very oppositemeanings.
(39:48):
And I can't, for the life of me,Oh, the English language has a
bunch of those homophones andhomonyms and things like that.
Words like here and here, howyou spell it, bear and bear.
One letter changes the wholemeaning, and sometimes it's even
spelled the same and the meaningis different, and that's where
you have to look at the context.
Cleave.
(40:09):
Cleave, okay.
Cleave as in to split apart andseparate, and cleave as in to
attach and hold on to.
I cleave to this, right?
And so if you just throw it outthere, cleave.
Just on the nature of it.
Hey, can you cleave this?
What do you mean?
Do you want me to cut it off ordo you want me to glue it?
(40:29):
Can
SPEAKER_01 (40:29):
you see how this can create a complete, like if a
parent tells a kid or anemployer tells an employee, hey,
can you cleave that?
Right.
And then you come back and youwanted it to be sewn together
and they
SPEAKER_00 (40:40):
cut it.
They're separated.
That can
SPEAKER_01 (40:42):
just create a disaster.
SPEAKER_00 (40:44):
That's right.
Words are...
provisional, they are to pointto a reality, and they are to
communicate, and they have thisdual, as so much in this world
(41:07):
does, this is not any newsreally, I think, to a
thought-out mind.
We live in a world of duality.
Coin has two sides.
Well, technically, some people,nitpicky will say it has three
sides.
And I forget what the edge is,but there's a name for it.
(41:29):
But they understand the point.
And this idea of that words arenothing.
Because they...
don't actually hurt.
The word pain and fire don'tburn and wet doesn't moisten
anything.
And yet, at the same time, thewords can cripple a person.
(41:56):
Destroy.
Destroy and obliterate and scarfor life.
Understanding and spreading themind to encompass that complete
reality of the duality as notensconced in one side and the
other, not mired here and there,not kind of divided between here
(42:18):
and there, but as a end.
Yeah.
I'm gonna make a big statement.
It's the word for peace.
End.
My view, end.
your view, my position, and yourposition.
(42:40):
Not this blackmail thing or notthis terrorist sort of thing,
mine or yours.
Open your hearts to thepossibility of and.
(43:01):
Put and in between words.
Make it inclusive.
Make it less divisive.
Unite.
Cleave.
Watch one.
Cleave.
Yeah.
I think be patient enough to seepast your perspective and your
(43:25):
point of view, right?
Whatever topic you're talkingabout, I oftentimes tell people,
well, if you're talking about anelephant, you have to really try
to think Are you standing at themountaintop or are you in the
valley?
And where is the elephant?
Because where you stand andwhere the elephant is completely
changes the perspective, right?
At the mountaintop, it's thesize of your thumb.
(43:46):
This is patience.
I think that sounds like a goodtopic for the next podcast.
Patience.
Patience.
What is it?
Many people say it's good,
SPEAKER_01 (43:57):
but then they tell me afterwards, but
SPEAKER_00 (43:58):
I don't
SPEAKER_01 (43:59):
have any of
SPEAKER_00 (43:59):
it.
Right.
What is it?
Patience.
How about that?
Next time.
Patience.
Here on The World Through ZenEyes.
Until then.
Until then.
Take care of yourselves and eachother.
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