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RE: Beyond Thinking and Language │Steemosophy 3/4 │
I find it a bit ironic quoting a Zen master to make a point about the value of discursive thought. Though perhaps not so much since you discuss its limits. ;-)
That's exactly why I selected a Zen master.
Since they claim to experience the ineffable.
So how would you resolve that contradiction? Is is a matter of definition of "knowledge" or "knowing"? I'm not being facetious.
I'm not really trying to resolve it.
I believe life can contain contradictions.
That quote is suggesting me that language is after all a system of signs through whitch we make sense of our experiences, it's not in fact the actual experiences.
Maybe that is one of the limits of language, the fact that they are very close "approximations" of experiences. And yet another contradiction arises. If it is indeed an approximation, and since I said that without language the thinking would have problems to augment our experiences into something that has meaning, does that mean that all our knowledge is an "approximation" of our experiences?
So many questions that I still don't have definitive answers to...
What do you think? I'd love to hear what you have to say.
Seems pretty obvious that there are no definitive answers to this.
Personally, I view language as a formulating (and so a filtering) device - just like other thought-forms such as unarticulated memories or emotional impressions. This comprises a whole lot more "stuff" than language does. And yet there is a kind of knowing associated with them, as there is in straight-up awareness, or attention.
Like I said, nothing definitive, but it's a pretty broad place we live.