On Language

You navigate the world through language.

Here. A short lesson on how language tries to capture reality.

Nouns are objects — naming things in reality.

Verbs are time — capturing what moves or holds.

Adjectives are qualities — describing the object.

Adverbs are qualities — describing the verb.

Look in front of you.

What is reality?

Your answer is a momentary crystallization of what is — reality named.

"My bandanna is rolled on the diagonal and retains water fairly well." (McPhee, Coming into the Country — p1)

Let's look at it together.

Some-thing has been named: "bandana".

The bandana's spatial position: "on the diagonal".

Across this specific time, the bandana "retains water" with a "fairly well" quality.

A sentence is an abstraction of reality — but taken to be an accurate representation.

What if we define reality as a process?

Let's remove the subject-object division from the sentence.

We will use Zen Master Dogen's famous words: Being-time.

Is that it?

It depends. Do you think there's such thing as "being-time" existing in reality?

"Being-time" is just a name. "Process" another.

Language is important. A useful tool to navigate reality. But language is not reality.

Language can never touch reality — because reality can't be captured in words.

Words are an abstraction.

And in this abstraction. It has potential.

Used with precision. It can be the finger pointing to it.

Don't grasp the words.

See — what are the words pointing to.

Life is a verb.