The english language and buddhism/mystic understanding

i support the idea that the english language can hinder understanding... in a spiritual sense, the integration of experience into the moment, almost a Buddhist idea.

Simple phrases like "Her mind", suggest that there is something to own the mind, something absolute and separate, a direct contradiction to the idea that we are the mind itself.

we use phrases like that all the time... would you think that this would hinder the westerners ability to understand experiential/moment/selfless concepts that are present in shamanism and Buddhism in terms of language alone? language is how we peice together our thoughts and make sense of them, and in the same way that our thoughts influence and change our language, growing up with a certain language also has to influence how we think about things and how our ideas develop.

Alan watts pointed out about western language vs eastern language -(English vs Japanese) in English, we separate the object from it's action, we make distinctions between separate parts, whereas in the japanese language, the object and the action are all considered one as they rely on each other and occur simultaneously.

what do you think?

 

I'm not really sure what you mean by most of that, but the reason why somebody observing "her" would say "her mind" is because she could be dead and not have a mind, only a body, and we would say "her body". If I say "my mind", I'm acknowledging that if I no longer have a mind, there is still a body. Kind of a metaphysically materialistic view of it that I'm not sure if I agree with, but that's how most people perceive the world and the most common usage tends to make its way into everyone's vocabulary.

So I actually think that language can influence perception and perception can influence language.

 

I think all human languages are not completely adequate for explaining everything perfectly, what matters more is the ability of the person using the language to express themselves honestly, accuratley and effectivley.

I think Buddhists call it right speech?

 

yeah i definitely agree that language in general can never fully convey experiences, it can only come so close.

but i do think that in general, if our language breaks things down a certain way, then we'll probably think in those terms because that's what we've learned to do, so if our language isolates different parts of the world and suggests that there are different distinct components that act independently, rather than a "collective motion", our thoughts will probably follow similarly.

obviously i'm not saying that people who speak english can't understand things in that collective way, but i do think that our language makes it a little bit harder, because we haven't developed our thoughts in a language that already assumes that everything is interconnected and relies on everything else.

 

I understand where you are coming from about the focus of language directing the focus of thought. But in regards to things being interconnected, isn't it fair to say that a language which demonstrates this interconnectedness perhaps loses sight of the individual components?

Is it not fair to say that all things are interconnected and at the same time all things are seperate?

 

i see what you mean, and definitely other languages are better equipt for these discussions, with ther lack of personal nouns, but i will go a step further and argue that language all together hinders the concepts taught by eastern philosophical mysticism. many philosophers will even say this (buddhist philosophers) that language limits the amount to which these types of ideas and even experiences can be put into words. These traditions thus emphasize experience. Even so, there are some who are more prone to being able to verbally communicate the philosophy and those who are more prone to experience it not be able to talk about it...i think experience is key.

even having a metaphysical experience can open one's eyes, but not allow for the true experience. plus the person telling the story, will mostly use "I"...but the I isn't too bad, from what i've gathered, it just depends on how one recognizes the experience...so basically after all this rambling jibberish i agree with you, but it extends beyond the english language to all languages, in my opinion.

 

A person's primary language has a great impact on his or her intellectual analysis and reasoning. Higher-level thought and language cannot be separated.