Thinking Without Words
The Tao... The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
Why does the true Tao have no name? Words are the most basic of human structures. They are the structure on which all other structures in society are formed. So they serve human society rather than the nature of the universe, and the Tao is all about the nature of the universe.
My language - English - controls and bounds how I think. It might even provide the structure to my universe. This concept is explored in the movie Arrival in which learning an alien language changes the main characters perception of time and space.
So I’ve been thinking about thinking without words lately. There are some that say its impossible. In one way thats true, its tough to know what I’m thinking about without the words. Words are the only contexturalization I have for thoughts, other than the images of imagination. Its also tough to communicate what I’m thinking to others without words. So in some ways the fact that I’m thinking, when I’m thinking without words, is somewhat of an assumption.
I’ve noticed I think without words in 2 activities (although I could also add imagination and meditation to the list too):
1. Doing Stuff, like sport, like art, etc. I don’t need words to focus on the physicality of what I’m doing.
2. Sensing stuff, through the 5 senses. Like smelling flowers, feeling things on skin, looking at the sky, listening to music, tasting food. Focused on these things I don’t think in words.
Its funny that these 2 things are the 2 things that define how I exist in the universe - through oberservation (sensing stuff) and participation (doing stuff). Yin Yang.
But if I exist in the universe through these 2 things. And these 2 things do not require thinking with words. Then what value is thinking with words?
Of course the answer is obvious. To participate in human affairs requires this communication. It requires words. Human affairs requires us to plan, to work, to spend, and that requires thinking with words.
Human affairs needs words, but the Tao - the universe - does not need them. Hence the true tao cannot be named.
And I see the two roads a taoist sage follows. The first, that of the universe - the Tao. The second, that of human society, and of words.
