Today I will discuss the interplay and operational conflicts between my two biggest passions: Language and mindfulness. Respect must be paid to one of the great minds that inspired this post — Philosopher (and covert linguist) Alan Watts. Thank you, Alan.
I have a background in linguistics and I thoroughly enjoy the process of language learning. Language has always been my way of relating to experience and reality.
But language has come up against another hobby horse of mine: Mindfulness. In meditation and mindfulness, one is meant to see beyond the words, beyond the concept; you are invited to drop the thinker, or the narrator and to just feel experience. Whilst in these meditative states of pure consciousness or when you’re so engrossed in an activity (sometimes called the flow state) there’s no words. For example, When you’re rock climbing, or in a creative process like painting, you’ll find a slight linguistic numbing – a cognitive limpness which is yet so full of aliveness. How is that possible?
It turns out those are the experiences you just can’t put a real label on. In Japanese Zen, speechlessness and a feeling of oneness is called Satori. Satori is said to be unexplainable, indescribable, and unintelligible by reason and logic. There’s just no words to describe what is happening – and more importantly no need to describe. Try to recall a time this has happened to you.
It is in these seemingly rare moments of linguistic and conceptual contraction that you are one with experience, and not relating to the world through the brokered lens of a language or ideology. That broker is the self and the self can only operate through the small limited view of language and concepts often anchored to a story – your story. That sense of self, or story, if you observe it, often appears in consciousness as a collection of words. But surely the essence of life, living, and you, is more than the concepts and words you choose to associate it with.
Think of opening your hand. You of course can attempt to describe the act of opening your hand, but you’ll find that the concept of opening your hand versus actually opening it are two vastly different things. Trying to harness enough lexical firepower to accurately represent the magnificence and mystery of the act of your hand opening, would be like trying to drink the entirety of the pacific with a tea cup. It simply isn’t possible. Any attempt to do so cheapens the profundity of such a conceptually normal experience. You don’t need to take my word for it, try it. Think about it (as counter intuitive as that sounds). Or better yet – feel it. You don’t always have to go up to the manager or thinker to throw down the experiential subtitles.
So back to language. As I began learning language in tandem with my contemplative practice, I began to wonder, have I been confusing the menu for the meal most of my life? This is a famous line by philosopher Alan Watts (to whom I owe very much). I’ve got a lot of great stories about myself. Ideas of who I am, and what it means to be this person. But that’s just it, the selfhood I have created is exactly that: ideas and stories. It’s not that these events did not happen or are not anchored in some truth; but often you’ll find that your mind has a way of adding conceptual layering and linguistic colour to the essence of your being which is akin to spray painting a ferrari. For example, how is it that two people experiencing the exact same thing can have two completely different perceptions of that experience. Objectively, the phenomena is identical – but it is the conceptual layering and collection of memories and ideas that gives the experience the unique colour in one’s mind. But has the experience changed?
This fact is most salient when I find myself toggling between languages: the predictability of my tendencies and behaviours in one language is practically indistinguishable in another. I practically become a different person. My whole conception of an experience may alter depending on the language I spoke; even my mood and sympathetic nervous system seems distinguishable by these separate transient states of mind.
So this points to an important truth. The menu is not the meal. You can’t eat the menu – you could try, but it wouldn’t give much sustenance. Nor the pictures on the menu. Sure they look pretty appetizing, but they are not the real thing.
This in a way demonstrates the power of representational language as a way to conceptualize, abstract or model reality. This is an ability that only humans seem to have in any complex abundance. This is such a salient feature of the homo sapien that even the strength of these conceptual counterweights against real experience seems to vary between languages. Yes, that’s right, the language you speak can affect the construction of one’s sense of self. So what’s that mean about the self? Take Person A, born in the same time and space speaking two different languages but having identical experiences. Has she constructed two separate senses of self? On that logic – is she two different people? Are the experiences different based on the cognitive filtering of each language? Is the quality of her perception of the experiences dictating the experience itself. … Is one menu better tasting than the other?
Let’s take another case study a little less thought experimental and more relatable/practical. Take Piraha – a very remote and isolated language spoken by a small indigenous hunter gatherer group of the amazonian rainforest. Piraha is unique, and maybe one of the simplest but inconceivable languages to understand for the conceptually dependent (of which we all are). Piraha has 8 consonants, 3 vowels, and no tenses to describe the past as well as a lack of descriptors for numbers. The Piraha have no need to describe time or numbers and have seemingly appeared to develop a unique concept of communication that incorporates song and whistling into the vocabulary.
So it begs the question: Are some languages more conscious and free from the shackles of concept than others. Does Piraha’s de emphasis on the past correlate to less anxiety, depression, or other existential or psychological crises in its people. These same issues seem to be catalysed by the rumination and compulsive thinking that plagues our modern society. It’s a marvel that the happiest people can be the most desolate, and yet those with a hedonic set point of modern day kings can be positively miserable. Are we turning the guns on the ship, so to speak?
A 2013 study stated that language has the ability to completely shape one’s personal identity. In other words, one’s use of a finite amount of words and concepts which is further limited by their particular mother language’s lexical prowess, is all one has to define an infinite amount of experiential possibility.
What’s happening is our unconscious linguistic assumptions are contaminating our pure reality creating a self-invented syntactic barrier between you, and experience.
So on that logic, is your perception of your life, that story, the win and loss column you’ve built in your head, the happy or sad ending you’ve cooked up for yourself, is that the meal, or the menu?
That’s not to say there is not practical use for language. Obviously, or these very words you’re reading should be transmuted into the essence of their meaning. That’s not possible… yet. The power of abstractions or models or concepts lies in their ability to allow aspects or connections to emerge that couldn’t without the model. Here lies the evolutionary benefit of language.
Take Science for example: Our descriptors of the atom which impressively includes the nucleus, electron, proton along with all their little symmetrical patterning and cool modularity that we’ve neatly wrapped up for conceptual consumption. This bears little resemblance to the actual atom, BUT it allows us to think about it in a way that is useful and conducive to the advancement of science as it pertains to the atom.
Therefore, I am merely cautioning you, the reader, from identifying and attaching any meaningful significance to these descriptions. In other words, do not take the concepts and language AS Truth, as I have. No description could ever be the magnificence of any given breath, or describe the waters of a still lake against the canvas of a setting sun – see I tried, still not good enough. Understanding these limits of language is the beginning of unearthing some of the critical mysteries about experience and our conscious existence. It is also the beginning of tasting true experiential freedom devoid of that mosquito net veil you wear at the wedding of your life.
In closing, I’m not denying the utility, power and beauty of language and cognition. In fact, this understanding allows me to love language more than I ever have before. Why? Because I’m no longer tangled in the drama language presupposes.
I can finally read the menu AND eat the meal and I wish for you to do the same.
Al holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Ottawa, and a Bachelor of Arts Double Major in Linguistics & Political Studies from the University of Manitoba. He is currently working in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Al has a passion for language, meditation, health, travelling, business and tech. Al is one of the co-founders of ThoughtNotion. You can connect with him on his personal site or on LinkedIn.
