Whenever ideas fail, men invent words.
Martin Fischer (1879–1962)
Zen has no words. When you have satori, you have everything.
Ch’an Master Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163)
Many lines of evidence point toward the latent dynamic powers of silence. [ZB: 367–370; 633–636] They converge to suggest that our entanglements with language in the left hemisphere hinder our awakening into kensho-satori. [ZBH: 30, 148–150, 155–156]
Distinctive of Zen is its distaste for wordy discourse. This is typified in the old phrase describing Zen as “the sect which does not establish words” (Furyu monji no shu).1 Kobori-Roshi also warned me to beware of words that have multiple meanings. Let us consider some examples of wordy complications.
The simple word object is very useful as a noun. [SI: 69–70] Still, there’s an occasion when its use could be misleading. Let’s begin over a century ago, when the pioneering neurologist Hughlings Jackson addressed the problem of consciousness. He identified (and capitalized) the two separate basic categories of our conventional “reality.” The category he placed first was termed Subject Consciousness. He used Subject Consciousness to refer to every situation during which we invested our own Self-awareness and feelings throughout every one of our personal extensions. [ZB: 380] Jackson’s use of this term subject was straightforward. It helped to define our dominant perspective as the only possible one that our own subjective, egocentric Self could view through its very own lens. No superficial intellectual logic probes deeply enough to grasp how extensive are the roots of this covert, subjective aspect of our I-Me-Mine. Usually, the huge bulk of this intrusive egocentric construct lies hidden from our view. Only after kensho-satori first cuts off its roots can the true extent of our former Subject Consciousness be appreciated. Our subjectivity becomes clear in retrospect (chapter 21). [ZBR: 261–262, 364–367]
Jackson used the contrasting term Object Consciousness, for the other category of reality. This second phrase was applicable to an anonymous awareness. It registered and perceived (and could re-create) the full presence of other things out there, in the external environment. Jackson used a brick as his example of such an external object. An ordinary brick (one to which we seem relatively unattached) helps us to understand what is meant by the different, dispassionate perspective that remains objective, allocentric, and other-centered. In this instance, objective is an adjective. It refers to the nature of reality, apart from our own feelings or thoughts.
Back in March 1982, I had not heard or read anything about Jackson’s Subject and Object Consciousness. Yet a similar useful distinction leaped instantly to mind when a residual i-me-mine groped for words to define the stunning, selfless perspective it had just witnessed in kensho. Emerging spontaneously at that later moment was the phrase “objective vision.” It signified that no “subject” (meaning no personal I-Me-Mine) was the intrusive agency behind that enhanced perspective of reality. No subjective lenses of my Self seemed to have refracted that earlier anonymous scene.
However, a semantic problem could arise. Suppose we were next to use the word object to describe an item such as an apple. We might feel much more possessive about an apple than a mere brick. Suppose this same apple-object were now subjected to the active focusing on by a hungry subject-person. Such a person’s Self-centered, top-down, dorsal attention system would then be under the grasping domination of our standard form of Subject Consciousness. At this point, the object has become entangled in (and attached to) the limbic-tinged concepts of that hungry-feeling subject person. Why is the word item a more useful word than object as a focus of attention? Because item is a sufficiently neutral word choice to be perceived by either form of consciousness.
Sometimes, your goal is spoken of as your “objective.” Of course, if you really intend to achieve “your” own objective, you must feel (subjectively) motivated to do so.
Today, neuroplasticity is ensconced as a more sophisticated way to describe what we used to call learning. The word plasticity can sound like what happens when something is molding a brain from the outside. This might lead us to overlook some subtle incremental effects of long-term retraining. These help us adapt by using our brain’s own intrinsic stress response systems. For example, when norepinephrine is released, it stimulates the paraventricular nucleus to release corticotrophin releasing factor. This excitatory polypeptide, in turn, reshapes adaptive responses throughout other medial regions of the cerebrum and brainstem. [ZBR: 113–120]
Lately, some research articles are using the word conjunction to imply that things are joined together in a unified association. Will it ever replace the old word integration? Integration still refers to the way separate things combine to form a complete whole.
In chapter 6 and figure 6.2 we discovered that these two words were used to refer to two separate categories of neural functions. However, separate words in English don’t necessarily separate all the subtle boundaries and hybrid pathways that the brain uses when it codes its physiological functions.
For example, content begins simply enough. It refers “to specific things that are contained.” But this begs the question: in what kind of larger container are they being enclosed?
Similarly, context refers to the environment. That’s OK so far. But dictionaries continue this definition: “Context refers to the environment in which something exists.” These words point us back toward that “something” in the center—the content within this context that helps to define it. Soon we’re in a yin/yang situation, trying to define one side unilaterally in the absence of the other.
In these pages, the use of a capital S in Self has a personal, localized Self-centered psychophysiological basis. This usage differs from the way the capital S tends to be used for the vast, universal “absolute witness” Self in some South Asian and transcendental meditation (TM) literature.2 [ZBR: 184] Moreover, during TM meditation and Advita meditation [ZB: 322], the descriptions of most experiences often called “transcendental” do not appear consistent with those major, alternate, selfless states of kensho-satori as they have long been described in the Zen tradition (chapter 2). Instead, transcendental then usually points toward less advanced states of absorption. At these times respiration slows substantially, and the frontal EEG leads show heightened degrees of alpha 1 (8–10 cps) coherence. These episodes of heightened awareness are often described using the term, “pure consciousness.” [ZBR: 237–238, 391–393]
Some long-term TM meditators notice that their enhanced sense of inner wakefulness persists even when they are asleep. These experienced trainees also have more intense rapid eye movements while dreaming. [ZBH: 84–89] Their slow-wave sleep may also show higher levels of the alpha 1 EEG activity referred to above. [SI: 296, n 11] In order to help fully characterize kensho-satori, a comprehensive longitudinal profile of neuroimaging changes, psychometric measurements, and self-reports will be required in addition to changes detectable in the EEG. The review by Nash and Newberg3 helps to resolve other word problems that have plagued meditation research in the past.