Something Significant That I Read This Morning. . .
"For most people in the world today, life has much to do with verbalization. Talking. Reading. Writing. Thinking. Imagining. Language is a magnificent human invention (though other species seem to have done all right without it), but it is so embedded in our consciousness that we don't realize how much revolves around it. It wouldn't be too much to say that we worship language or that we're addicted to it. We equate it with living itself.
Another aspect of life for most people--related to language, obviously--is some for of action. Doing things. Creating. Moving things around, piling them up, arranging them. Engaging the body in physical activity, even just to enjoy ourselves in recreation.
In those two forms of endeavor, our culture--compared with others today, and especially compared with cultures from the past--is rich. We have more things, and more things to do, more varied uses of thought and language, than at any other time in human history. We're beyond rich. We're opulent.
Inwardly, however, we are paupers. our throats are parched, and our spiritual bodies are gaunt. That is probably why we have so many outer things. We keep using them to satisfy a hunger that never gets any better. It seems insatiable.
We have a similarly vast craving for relationship. I know someone, for instance, with a great interest in mountain climbing who was recently extolling the wonders of the Internet. The night before he had been talking to a fellow mountain climber in Siberia. That's wonderful, I said. But have you talked to your wife lately? Your children? We have this marvelous technology, but it doesn't seem to be helping with the life right in front of us. I have no doubt that if the Siberian mountain climber had shown up at my friend's door, he would have dialed 911. He wanted to know him on a screen, not face to face.
I don't mean to make light of our technology. The computer--like language--is a marvelous human invention. I'm writing this chapter on one. I have no doubt that the Internet is a wonderful resource, like having the greatest library in the world at your fingertips.. But if accumulating information were going to save us, we'd have made it a long time ago.
The shortcomings of that kind of knowledge were brought home to more more than twenty years ago, when I was in Korea and studied with a monk named Byok Jo Sunim, one of the most memorable people I've ever encountered. He almost visibly glowed, radiating the joy that the practice brought him. He was extremely loving, had a wonderful sense of humor. He was also completely illiterate. He couldn't sign his name.
While talking with him through an interpreter one day, I discovered that he thought the world was flat. I was absolutely astounded, and naturally decided to straighten him out. I went back to grade-school science, brought out all the classic arguments: if the world is flat, how can we sail around it: How come a ship doesn't just fall off the edge? He just laughed. He was adamant. I got nowhere.
Finally, he said, "Okay. Maybe you Westerners are right. I'm just an illiterate old man. The world is round, and you know that, and I'm too stupid to grasp it. But has knowing that made you any happier? Has it helped you solve your problems of living?"
It hadn't, as a matter of fact. It hadn't helped us with our problems at all. None of our knowledge has.
With all that we've learned, we human beings have not solved even the simple problem of living together. We have incredible technology, which can put us in touch with people on the other side of the world, but we don't know how to get along with the people in our own neighborhood, even in our own house.
One part of our culture is soaring, and another part is barely crawling. We are caught up in an illusion, a marvelous conjuring trick that has convinced us that the things we produce will make us happy. Not only are we the audience for this trick, we are also the magician. We have convinced ourselves.
We need to go much deeper into the mind. It's as if we are surrounded by vast fields, fertile soil as far as we can see, but we've only cultivated a tiny patch of it. We've done a wonderful job with that patch, but we need to explore the fields all around it. We need to get away from all the building and doing, coming and going, all the talking and thinking and reading and writing."
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