Words can't touch this
Our language, whatever our native tongue, can’t touch this.
And that message comes from someone who still loves the discipline of etymology — I suppose you’d expect nothing less from a lawyer.
But even I know with my broad palette that what I’m pointing to is beyond the ken of our understanding:
the absolute appearing as the relative
subject appearing as object
the unknown appearing as the known
And in that there is great joy — not that there’s anyone to rest in the revelry of the mystery of this — i.e. the empty fullness.
I recognise that, to the separate self that lives in the material world where free will and choice, cause and effect and getting and becoming are its stock in trade, this message is completely hopeless, futile and in many ways quite frightening but what I’m sharing isn’t some hope-fuelled exercise to mollify and sanctify the ‘me’, ‘I’ or ‘self’ — sorry folks.
You might take that to mean that my message borders on the futile, or at least it leans in the direction of nihilism.
But it isn’t or rather it doesn’t.
Why?
Because there is no one to give up on life or feel that everything has no purpose.
Huh?
I’ll say it again:
All there is is this.
Namely, there is no subject (i.e. you) and object.
Before I sign off, let me circle back to the rubric to this post and invite you to consider something I’ve previously prayed in aid: The history of (y)our current lexicon.
Who says that (as examples only) a chair is a chair? Or, a tree a tree? Or, a person/human a person/human? You only know that because you’ve been taught to bark those words.
Now, of course, I realise in our modern world language can be useful — e.g. “I’d like a glass of water please” — but the thing we’re describing doesn’t ever come close to describing what it actually is. If you want to be more scientific, you can say it’s formless given its makeup and the fact that it’s always shifting, changing and moving onto something else makes it impossible to describe. But this again still identifies with a subject-object world; but it does, perhaps, give you a pointer to the empty fullness that I keep prattling on about.
I recognise that to the ‘me, ‘I’ or ‘self’ this is probably the most unappealing message there is but then again, and if my limited, past experience is anything to go by, there are (at least) a few people who have a sensitivity to explore something different to the traditional and time-honoured way of seeing the world.
Take care.
Blessings, Julian