“Except that it robs you of who you are,
What can you say about speech?
Inconceivable to live without
And impossible to live with,
Speech diminishes you.
Speak with a wise man, there’ll be
Much to learn; speak with a fool,
All you get is prattle.
Strike a half-empty pot, and it’ll make
A loud sound; strike one that is full,
Says Kabir, and hear the silence.”-Kabir, translated from Hindi by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
“Language and speech require a mix of various sounds
In order to form words and sentences expressing meanings.
But words and phrases can’t express all meanings; how could sounds
Guide beings toward a breakthrough to enlightenment?”– Manjusri, Shurangama Sutra, translated from Chinese by Buddhist Text Translation Society
We probably all had the experience of trying to explain something—an event, an object, a reflection—to others when language and words don’t quite do justice and fail to reenact the full richness of the live object or event to our audience. The verse from the Shurangama Sutra and Kabir speak elegantly of this conundrum: “inconceivable to live without, and impossible to live with,” “words and phrases can’t express all meanings.” This dissatisfying phenomenon has perhaps most to do with the mechanism of how we make meaning out of the things or events we observe using our sense faculties. This mechanism of meaning-making is analogous to taking measurements in any scientific experiment.
In quantum mechanics, spin is a characteristic property of elemental particles such as electrons and atomic nuclei. Modern physicists, notably Wolfgang Pauli, use the concept of spin to help redefine and reinforce the periodic table of elements. Simply stating, spin is a degree of freedom of a particle, akin to the concept of angular momentum in classical physics. The number of spin states of any system depends on its spin quantum number. For an electron, there are two possible states: up and down. Most of what I learned from my college senior class in quantum theory are at best blurry today after a dozen years, but one qualitative lesson from that class has stayed with me until today.
… before a measurement of an observable object, the system can be at any state with varying probability; a measurement “throws” the measured system into one of its possible states.
According to Paul Dirac, a preeminent physicist who helped develop quantum theories, “a measurement always causes the system to jump into an eigenstate of the dynamical variable that is being measured.” In layman’s language, before a measurement of an observable object, the system can be at any state with varying probability; a measurement “throws” the measured system into one of its possible states. In essence, the measuring activity changes the state of the things we try to learn and know so that we have no way of knowing their states before the act of measurement. Everything exists to us, and is knowable by us, only after our consciousness tries to ascertain its nature. To complete the loop, the results of measurement inform and form our (mis)understanding and perception, which will, in turn, shape the transforming force of a future measurement.
To be meaningful, the moment-to-moment menage of sense data has to represent something in each of our own internal symbolic structures.
Where do measurements take place really? Our sense organs are capable of directly perceiving sense objects that appear in proximity to them. However, an aspect of our consciousness—in Buddhism this aspect of our consciousness is called the 6th consciousness—is what makes meaning out of these disjointed, chaotic, random, and overwhelming masses of sense objects. In fact, our deep tendencies delimit the field of senses, drawing a boundary on what our organs are capable of sensing; then our 6th sense picks and chooses, and assembles parts and components out of the field of sense data to make meaning according to our own narratives. To be meaningful, the moment-to-moment menage of sense data has to represent something in each of our own internal symbolic structures. For virtually all of us, language serves as the means and medium for locating and communicating meaning to ourselves and to other people.
That set of dynamic, constantly changing sense data no longer exists, only the representations of their assembly—often a limited set of perspectives on them—live on in our consciousness.
Therefore, the simple act of communicating through languages (including signs and gestures) has the effect of identifying, assembling, and drawing connections between sense objects out of the sense field, and assigning meaning to the collage according to our internal symbolic structure. Further, for most of us, we grasp firmly onto that connection between the signifier and the signified, and in effect, eliminate the real sense object from our view. That set of dynamic, constantly changing sense data no longer exists, only the representations of their assembly—often a limited set of perspectives on them—live on in our consciousness. In effect, the “measurement” has the effect of collapsing consciousness into a singular focus. Further, this assignment of meaning will contribute to defining the field of our senses in the future, likely leading to a trend of narrowing the field so our world and universe become smaller and smaller.
That’s perhaps why the Buddhist practices of Sila, or moral discipline, focus equally on the mind and speech as well as the body, and why many serious practitioners take on the practice of silence. These practices do not aim to inhibit, but rather, to eventually liberate us from our own limited field of senses and points of view. In order for us to communicate better, we need to be free of the deep tendencies that color and obscure our “vision.” As I wrote in this past blog post on donuts, the practices of Sila—moral discipline of body, mouth and mind—are effective in shining a light on these deeper undercurrents of our lives—often the very things we assume an identity with and therefore are blind and subservient to—so that we can look at them straight on. Adopting such practices will serve as an important first step toward clear perception and better communication.