The Garden Path of Language

Time to write! I've been late in posting my blog article this week because I had a social function yesterday--Saturday, my usual day for blogging. I came back rather late and was too tired to write. But it was great to be able to catch up with some old friends again. We are all trying to find meaning in our lives in some way and each chooses a path based on circumstance and fate.

Why are some of us Christians and others Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists or Muslims? Is one religion superior to another? In my case, I love all of the above and I try to be a student of them all. I've made my music-religion analogy many times in previous articles before. I appreciate many types of music and listening to many enriches my life considerably. But I will call out someone who thinks only his or her music is the only true one.

Why some of us prefer a particular music to another is akin to why we choose one religion over another. If you are Chinese and grew up in an environment where you're exposed to more Chinese music, that will inevitably influence your choice of music. Similarly with religion. 

And then each one of us has our own individual tastes. Religious text is like poetry. We respond to language differently, depending on our personality. Some prefers the language of love, others the dry but more precise language of logic. Which is why the Bhagavad Gita outlines the many paths towards enlightenment: karma yoga (action), bhakti yoga (devotion), jnana yoga (intellectual) and the raja yoga (spiritual) paths. 

I love all of them. But I also understand the pitfalls of each, if one were to think that any one of them is the only exclusive path. Often any religion is a mixture of all four. You would have a system of ethics that give you guidance over day to day action or conduct; some prayer and rituals which help to cultivate a devotional heart, some doctrinal philosophy to satisfy your intellectual doubts and curiosity and some mystical or contemplative practices such as meditation or silent retreats to awaken the divine spirit within.

To pursue any religious path, one must also understand the limitations of language. Again my music analogy comes in handy: the beauty of music is directly experienced. Any attempts to 'explain' why a particular piece of music is beautiful ultimately falls short. Religious texts seek to inspire rather than inform. All words are pointers to the truth. Not understanding this fact, leads to fanaticism.

"The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao". The first line of Lao Tze's Tao Te Ching basically lays done this basic truth about the limitation of language in expressing ultimate reality. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God". The first verse of the Gospel of John also alludes to this. "Word" here is translated from the Greek "logos", which also means "reason". The moment any ultimate truth is articulated in language, it is already a model, an imprecise pointer, a map and not the actual terrain itself. 

Emptiness is form, form is emptiness as the Mahayana Buddhists would tell you. Is the concept of emptiness a form of nihilism? No. It may appear so because, again we have to express things in language and language is also a kind of form that attempts to represent a truth. Which is why Buddhist philosophers like Nagarjuna uses the language of negation to express what's actually there.

In Nagarjuna's Madyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, the tetralemma involved in every proposition is denied. Let's say someone asserts that 1. there is a self.  The answer is no. If so, then can one conclude with lemma 2: There is no self? The answer is also no! Then, what about 3:  there is both self and no self. No again!  And finally, in exasperation, we say: there is neither self nor no self. Nagarjuna says no, that is also not true!. What's left of all these negations is the best approximation of the truth, which is the essence of Nagarjuna's Middle-Way. 

Zen masters also tries to dislodge their students from the grip of conceptual language thinking using koans. Truth can only be realised by transcending language. At the meantime, we will still talk, write and reason as much as we can, so that we get a glimpse of the Truth. But don't get too hung up on them.  The large language models, LLMs, derived their intelligence from language itself. We know how that sometimes lead to hallucinations. But even hallucinations can be useful pointers to the truth as they reveal the nature of the model itself.

The world we experience is maya or virtual. But it is also our instrument for inferring the truth. Our sciences, built using the precise language of mathematics have been able to penetrate the secrets of nature beyond our wildest dreams, and continue to do so. The scientists know the limitation of their mathematical models and are constantly on a lookout of better ones.

Beautiful though the existing paths are, we must not be seduced by them. If we are not vigilante, language, concepts and religious doctrines could lead us down that garden path.