.png)
The World Through Zen Eyes Podcast
What we do?
Once a week we take a look at the going-ons of the world and say something about ‘em.
The goal?
None, really. Just trying to make heads and tails of the great world roar of Ooommmmmm.
Why?
To try ‘n keep a modicum of personal sanity. And stay off both the meds and the cool aid.
The point?
Points are sharp and therefore violent. We just go around, and round….and round.
Disclaimer:
The views, perspectives, and humor of the speakers and guests of this podcast do not necessarily represent the those of any associated organizations, businesses, or groups, social, religious,cultural or otherwise. The entirety of the podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Topics discussed and views expressed do not constitute medical advice. As the saying goes “Opinions are like bellybuttons, everybody’s got one”.
The World Through Zen Eyes Podcast
Ep. 1 - Words about words
FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestion
Our FIRST episode of the World Through Zen Eyes Podcast. We talk about talking, we word about wording. How words in the linguistic zeitgeist have become polemic OR hackneyed and perhaps a better way, instead of "or" is to view it in terms of "and".
Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com
Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org
We're going to talk about words. Words in today's linguistic zeitgeist. Words have been either weaponized... lost their meaning to frequent the use, rendering them completely impotent or have become so polemic and so controversial that one has his own mouth twisted either in one direction or another. And things can either be The unfortunate thing is that it's either or. So it's or this or that. And in that way it perpetuates kind of warring factions and it perpetuates further division. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think words in today's day and age has become a major trigger. If you want to get somebody's blood pressure rising...
SPEAKER_01:There are certain words that will really get them going.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was recently having this conversation with myself regarding the use or potential use. I didn't analyze that. Right. You talked back? I did talk back. In your own voice? In my own voice. Okay, very good. Check, cleared that. Very good. Yeah, I was weighing. whether or not it's appropriate or safe or however you want to call it, the word schizoid. And again, there's the version of it where it's a derogatory term, kind of aimed at people with schizophrenia. But it's sort of unfairly hijacked, right? Because... There is a word schizoid that's got its own life, but it's been kidnapped and abducted and somewhere locked up in a basement of derogatory terminologies. And the etymology of it is from Greek, which sort of means separate and kind of disjointed and disconnected. you know so which goes into some of the early theories of schizophrenia where the mind just becomes fragmented into a million different pieces and so disorganized the individual doesn't even know what's coming from where there's no consistency you know right and that sort of fragmented chaotic element of it and so I had that sort of conversation with myself because it was I don't recall anymore what the actual context of it was going to be, but it was intended to mean what the word means. It was intended to suggest a fragmented inconsistency of something. And by no means, in my mind, it was... tied to schizophrenia or any derogatory kind of connotation towards people with mental disorder. But the very fact that I sort of ended up having this conversation with myself is indicative of something. This imposed or need for self censorship, which isn't to say one shouldn't, We just don't shoot off the mouth whatever you want. But there's a balance. And it was kind of an interesting thought experiment to sort of look at it. And I would like to use the word. I like the word. for whatever reason, right? And so... It rolls off the tongue nicely, right? Yeah. And so do you then... But it has a significant meaning behind it when used properly. Right. Right? Yeah, because it is... It's been well thought out. It's not just something that they randomly put together and said, ah, let's name it this. No. Yeah. And it's that whether... How to present it in a way... And we... automatically do this. We think of words and we think of ways that we express ourselves and pump our thoughts out into the universe, trying to avoid unnecessarily or accidentally hurting people. Right, that's the heart of everything, right? Like compassion, having understanding and trying not to unnecessarily use words with the intention of harming another individual, right? Unless the intention is to hurt somebody. And then in that case, the use of the word is appropriate, right? If the word you're using is meant to inflict pain, then... If that's your goal, right? If that's your goal, then that's the thing. But this is not what I'm talking about. Yeah, you see that all the time when you're
SPEAKER_01:driving with those... people that cut you off and you just got to observe it. There's a lot of words being thrown out there that have really serious intention to hurt another person.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So in this dialogue of mine or monologue, whichever one crosses me off a...
SPEAKER_01:It goes back and forth.
SPEAKER_00:Dialogue, monologue. It waxes and wanes. It's like the tide. And the thought then was, well, it's not, there's a balance to be had and one can present a definition of sort of to clarify the terms. Like this is what I mean by this word. And it's a thoughtful thing to do because Some people might not know what the word means, and so you could define it on a fly, and the person's like, oh, I learned a new word today also. I'm trying to learn new words as much as I can, and sometimes you can't pick your hand up. Excuse me, I don't know what that word meant, but if you could kind of glean the meaning from the content. But this idea of, either or, the or as a in-between word, that the words can be so powerful or so nothing. And in thinking of that, what I've arrived at is that the or has to be changed. Because it's not, so long as that or seems to kind of dangle between those two things, it does create a warring state. It's this versus that. This one against that. And... Tell me about it. Sit five minutes with me in a couples therapy session and you'll see a warring state of words. Right. You'll see how words can really induce a war between two people. Yeah. And so within the Zen philosophy, the idea of, and it's not only within Zen philosophy, but this idea of worlds perfuming other worlds, the multiverse almost that is present here in front of us and the vast multitude of realities intertwined with one another, which makes it not or but end. So the words are so powerful, and at the same time, at the same time, nothing. And... Superimposed, one on top of the other. Interwoven. Yeah, they simultaneously, it's a very bizarre, and I think psychologically kind of... the mind has to think a little bit because we are accustomed to a finite arrival at a destination, psychologically, emotionally. Like, okay, I'm here. I cannot be here and there simultaneously. The whole of philosophy and the paradigm of life is based in the physical form. And so I could sit in this chair or that chair. I can't sit in both of these chairs. So the end, doesn't even arise in the mind. But we have to understand that the mind is not the body in this context, and that it could be both, and words can both simultaneously both exist in these two different realities, and one being that they are nothing, and the other being that they are so powerful. Because the... The word pain. Pain, pain, pain, pain. Are you in pain? Stop, stop, stop. Right? So hot doesn't burn. And pain doesn't burn. For some people, if
SPEAKER_01:I say
SPEAKER_00:balding, ouch. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Right? If that's something that you're self-conscious about, then now I feel pain.
SPEAKER_00:Right. But the word itself has not inflicted the pain.
UNKNOWN:Right.
SPEAKER_01:That's the thing, the word itself, bald, does not refer to pain. So it's almost like we transform the word into that pain.
SPEAKER_00:We have that ultimate great superpower. We are sort of godlike in that sense. I was thinking about that. And it almost follows this philosophy where words also have a beginning, duration, and an end. So there's the evolution of the word, right? So when the word is created in the
SPEAKER_01:furnace deep in the earth, I think the word god's name is Webster. The Webster God, when he created the word, by the way, I'm dating myself. Everyone out there who's from my generation surely has seen Webster's Dictionary. It was heavy enough to kill somebody.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And there was one of them in the classroom. And if you wanted to know the word, the good teacher would say, well, go look it up.
SPEAKER_01:Go look that
SPEAKER_00:up. And... The pain of having to look it up makes you remember it, though.
SPEAKER_01:You don't forget that.
SPEAKER_00:Right, because you're like, I'm not walking over there and rifling through 3,000 pages again, so I better hold on to that information. Better remember that. I'm not doing that twice. Yeah, so the word transforms and evolves. The individuals... Throughout their lifetime can change the meaning of the word based on their experiences or I think the collective too. I mean, there's two different things. I think early on
SPEAKER_01:when you first started talking, you're talking or referring to the collective whole and how they're responding
SPEAKER_00:to certain types of words that can trigger people. But yeah, I think that. The individual wields a lot of
SPEAKER_01:power. And when there's a communication between two people, the sounds are traveling back and forth, right? But what we can't see, like you're talking about, is
SPEAKER_00:what's hidden, right? What is the world that is overlapped right here in this present moment? On a very basic level, our thoughts and our feelings, we can't
SPEAKER_01:see that. We can, I can tell you something. I can say, hey, where the heck did you get those sandals from? Those are really ugly, right? And then you can make a face, right? And then I can say to myself, hmm, I think that didn't have a good impact. Right? But in the inside, we don't see that part. And then, I just, here's another thing that creates a fa-pois during communication. I just want you to understand what I mean, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right. You know, that's... And this is where words... That creates a lot of... Yeah, where words fall short. Rumi's got a splendid little bit, one of his poems... And he talks largely of love, but it's the love of the divine for the most part, kind of cloaked in the mundane, but something to the effect of, and the pen breaks and the paper kind of wafts away in the wind. And what he's hinting at is the end of, of the power of language to communicate. We contort ourselves so much to try to express our inner worlds. And we have to acknowledge that, that duality, the and. The and, yes. That words can not really express, and that's all we got, in a sense. I mean, action speed, language, and words, and pictures are worth a thousand words and all of those things, but it's the primary mode of at least on the conscious level, communication, because pheromones are more subtle and more first of a communication, right? Very subtle, somebody walks in the door and before we even kind of say a word, there it is, there's a whole communication underway already. But. And even body language too, we're processing that too. Yeah, and so. Before we even talk. Those, we could say all those things are language and words and it's true, it's body language. But in terms of the use of the Webster's. Mr. Webster. Mr. Webster. This episode is sponsored, not, but could be. It really is this. Put that
SPEAKER_01:in
SPEAKER_00:a book bag and take a hike. You'll see how strong your legs get after a few months. Let me
SPEAKER_01:tell you, that's the ultimate rock weight right there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it's the refinement of oneself. that aims and hopes for being able to communicate and transmit our deepest innermost feelings and emotions. And try as we may, language, can't, and fall short, right? And at the same time, what's his name? Rumi refers a lot to that, right? Like you were referring to. Right, the shortcomings. Isn't there, I don't remember exactly, maybe you remember where he says something like, I think this one was talking about love, and he's talking about there's a field in the beyond. Ah, yeah, beyond good, beyond right thinking, beyond wrong thinking, there's a meadow I will meet you there. Wow, that's
SPEAKER_01:very profound.
SPEAKER_00:I say that, I say that, Just the other day, I had someone come for the Tea with the Habit. So it's a kind of a private... Wonderful program, by the way, for those of you who are interested. It is... You know, we have tea and talk. And someone was asking... People don't know what to do with it. Sometimes
SPEAKER_01:with words, sometimes with mind.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And someone was asking, well, what's the protocol? And I said, well, the protocol is that. Communicate. It's in the Rumi-like, you know, Rumi-esque in a sense. It's let's have tea, like two human beings, you know, and what comes of it. if we don't try to manufacture. And I've spoken about this recently in one of my talks. Someone had asked, because technically, if there are no questions in the Zen culture, the Zen master doesn't speak. And I saw a meme that said, a great wise man once said nothing. So there is this invitation that I most of the time give, are there any questions? And someone said, I don't have a questions, but I'm gonna come up with one. And that turned into a whole thing because the manufactured questions in this context of Zen and the pursuit in the way that Zen presents pursuit of truth, of self-knowledge, of wisdom, or enlightenment, ultimately speaking, the manufactured questions are false. They're plastic. They're not truth. The way that if someone, you know, someone comes into the Zen Center and says, oh, I see that you have the abbot's room and I see they have Dr. Lambert's office and bathrooms. And if this is where their recount of where they have been and what they have seen ends, then right away we know, okay, well, they haven't seen the Dharma Hall. And it's through the journey. So for people who do the work, In the questions lies also not only a question but an announcement of where I've been, how much work I've done, what have I seen, and they question then those new vistas that they visit. So someone could say, oh, you know, there's a dharma hall. And then someone else will say, well, have you been to the kitchen? Oh, there's a kitchen, I haven't been to the kitchen. Why? Because they haven't done the work. So they haven't seen the kitchen. And on and on. It's like, oh, there's a, you know, there's a cafe. Yes. Did you see the lunchroom? No. Okay. So yeah. And so in the questions, we know exactly where the student is. Yeah. What they've seen, where they've been, what their upcoming questions may be. I think maybe the next time then you meet and if you have a conversation and then they reflect back to their understanding, then you know, well, after the question, how much did they dig into how much did they retain? Like you were saying, if they came and they spoke to you, and then they went to their friends and regurgitated
SPEAKER_01:and said, oh, I just saw the abbot's room and I saw Dr. Lambert's office, then how much did you miss? Or how much did you not take with you and process and digest
SPEAKER_00:that? And so words, again,
SPEAKER_01:are
SPEAKER_00:very powerful. Because they are the map. But but they are not the territory in the Zen context. So this idea of words being nothing and being so powerful really kind of recently captured my thinking because it leaves us, as Zen frequently does, broader than verses. Verses, Even in the verses, the usual is my position versus your position. And the usual is, I know ever so much more about my position and not enough about your position because you're, you know, I mean, if you've read, you know, maybe, I don't know, Miyamoto Musashi's end of the Book of Five Rings and, you know, know thy enemy better than you know your friend kind of thing, then maybe, you know, you're a skilled warrior in a sense. But for the most part, people don't do that. People don't do that. They, it's confirmation bias. So, They reinforce their already preexisting notions and points of views. And so the versus keeps us ensconced in our own little corner. And it's a sort of isolationist state of being. And then it's also the versus. pairs it with usually a sheer refusal to hear the other side because emotion becomes involved and forget it. Forget it. Don't talk about religion or politics because it's so divisive. To me, they're one and the same. Religion and politics. Politics is religion of the people and religiously Adhere to and violent in that sense. A comment right there is that the mind shuts down and closes when you have a discussion with a person that has a point of view outside of your perspective or outside of the limitations of your knowledge. There's no, what you're trying to say is, when it's versus, nobody wants to see the other person, the other side. They just stand their ground and they die there. The ego death. You just die there. I'm not moving
SPEAKER_01:from this spot,
SPEAKER_00:right? And if we consider the yin yang or what we in Korean call um yang, the symbol of the sort of black and white fish, if you will, with that, you know, so the black fish has the white eye and the white fish has the black eye kind of thing. And nothing, nothing in this life is entirely comprised of a position, to which it is completely endeared to. There's always within it an element of that which one considers opposition, so that the black half of the fish has the white eye. If it does not, that is stagnation, and stagnation is death. And no element of life has 100% of one kind of element of it.
SPEAKER_01:Can the person open their mind enough to include that one little piece?
SPEAKER_00:It's very difficult for some people. And this is where the end between these things comes in. End, right? End will... Right, because... That's a very powerful connotation there that's created, right? That end is freeing. It really is. It's inclusive. It's opening. It's broadening. It's... Because in as much as a person considers their mired position to be so rigid, it is still, and in fact, unbeknownst to them frequently, a prison. There's an encampment that they believe that they want to be in entirely. But if a thing brings you so much pain and so much suffering and so much friction, is it really what you want on a deep thing? Or is it kind of this cult-like thing? Well, I've sold my car and I've moved into the mountains and I wear pants with no zippers and I can't go back now.
SPEAKER_01:You've made that decision and now you don't want to disappoint anyone. I don't want to be a hypocrite. You just stick to it the whole way through, no matter how much pain, suffering, or maybe you
SPEAKER_00:realize this isn't for me, just ride that through. And it's that kind of, so it's imprisoning. I think a general term that we use maybe, let's say, in psychology or in everyday language is stubbornness. Stubbornness. Right? And I have a great story for that. Let me
SPEAKER_01:just tell you about my great-grandfather. My dad told me this story. So my great-grandfather had farms in Cuba. One of
SPEAKER_00:the farms was on the beach, and he was there walking with his friends. And he says, look over there. And he points into the beyond, and he says, look at that group of goats. And then his friends say... Wait a minute, over there? And he says, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then two seconds later, they fly away. And he says, I think his name was Jesus. Jesus, didn't you see? They flew away.
SPEAKER_01:They can't be goats. They're pelicans. And he goes, they might have flown away, but they were goats. I was like, my goodness. I was totally kidding. Yeah, you're not losing a single. You're just not moving from your point. You will die at that place no matter what. Yeah. I guess I might have inherited a little
SPEAKER_00:bit of that. It's a funny story, but it's a funny story on a first telling. And if you give it an iota of thought, it's a sad story. For someone to be so rigid. I mean... One of the signs, external signs of death is rigor mortis.
SPEAKER_01:The body is just
SPEAKER_00:stiff and rigid and stubborn. And even before that, a person who doesn't do any exercise or who has a lot of
SPEAKER_01:muscle cramps or arthritis,
SPEAKER_00:it's still,
SPEAKER_01:their muscles are tight, they can't move. Stubborn, the muscles are stubborn. The muscles are
SPEAKER_00:stubborn. Yeah, it's... What I've experienced within the study of Zen, because as we all are, I think, for the most part, at the beginning of our journey, intellectually ravenous, I mean, I've read I think anything and everything that used to be in that place, that museum place called the library, remember those places? Where they keep- Some
SPEAKER_01:still do exist. They're rare. Rare finds, but yes.
SPEAKER_00:Or bookstores, too. Where they keep these things called books that you have to go and go through a catalog and then go through the Dewey, Dewey decimal system. You can't just say, hey, Siri, find this. Right. And I think as we all frequently are, when interests are peaked, we become ravenous on the topic. And this is what my experience was. And I've consumed incessantly whatever things of topic, of interest, philosophy, various religions, Zen, the scriptures, the this, the that, And the whole spectrum of it, from very dogmatic to very transcendental and mystical to bordering on insanity, as many of the philosophers and those who have gone down the rabbit hole and haven't been seen again. And the experience... eventually became that we must understand what words really are and how to see them in a sober sort of wisdom way. That is to say that they are provisional. And when consumed, the words create a world of their own and we, as my own son-in-law would say, you drown in the book. you become so fixated on the words and how they're said and so precisely that those things become so much more of the reality than the reality to which the words point to. The map is not the territory, but one could be so deluded that one begins to think that as the words describe it, so it is. Right. So in other words, maybe by regurgitating something that you read in the book, you actually feel like you directly understand the point. You have the direct experience, right. So at that point, you were no different than a parrot. We are all parrots. I remember one of the first teachings that Unsanem, Unsanem is our Zen teacher, gave to us was, Bring me all the books. Bring me all the books. Bring me all
SPEAKER_01:the books.
SPEAKER_00:And he's so kind of cute about it because like, oh, you know, in his limited language, in his limited English language, right? Oh, what kind of books are you reading? I'm interested. You know, and so because, you know, clearly if you said... gave me all the books where I'm like, oh, you know, some contraband books might have been stashed and quote unquote accidentally forgotten, but we so proudly, you know, presented and I brought my entire library of information and it's like, oh yeah, leave it over there in the corner of the meditation room, you know. And didn't think of it until I had forgotten about those books. And then having forgotten about them, forgotten, and then had a sort of aha moment at one point in time. It's like, wait a second. I had a library of books that I left here that is now missing, right? And this was kind of a covert operation on his side of it to free me. Because I don't think at that time you had the and. Right. You had the or. There was just the or. At the time I had nothing. At the time I had the words. The words were it. As they were, right? And, you know, it's interesting. There's a tea. Not that long ago I had someone come for the tea with the abbot. And I served them omija. Omija is a, And I don't recall what the English name of the, it's a red berry, and it's dehydrated. And when you make tea of it, it rehydrates it, obviously. But Omija is five-flavor tea. And when you initially brew it, As the temperature of it changes, the flavor changes, the flavor profile shifts, right? So it's simultaneously a little bit sweet, a little bit salty, a little bit bigger, a little bitter, a little tangy, you know, there's a little umami thing in it, you know, so it's got this whole experience depending on the temperature of the water, depending on how long you steep, et cetera, et cetera. And words, too, have that quality similar quality that they could change flavor, right? And they could change flavor depending on what other words they're juxtaposed against. How do you construct your statement And you put a word in the wrong place that is banal and they will then weaponize it, they will insult, they will whatever. So the construct of it makes a difference. But also with reading and consuming words, as you change and you evolve and your eye opens, because now it's very interesting. Because now... You can consume
SPEAKER_01:books. Back then, the teaching was, and again, this is so Zen, right? As you evolve, the same no becomes an okay or a yes, right? Because your eye, a wisdom is open. Now, you're not just consuming those words as a prison, like maybe it was back then, that
SPEAKER_00:would... obstruct your development I was just thinking like as a metaphor like early on you're very excited about something right so you just consume recklessly like someone let's say reads a
SPEAKER_01:mushrooms are good for you and so you just you're an amateur you got into the forest and you just eat consume all the mushrooms all the mushrooms you'll end up dead or tripping that'll be the last mushroom trip you've been on right but then you know you go into a course you study with someone who's an herbalist
SPEAKER_00:now you know how to describe You know, I have this, this is what I can use. When, why, that I. The nuance. The nuance. Early on in someone's journey, they don't have that nuance. You know, I'm almost sort of leaning towards saying that in the youth of our spiritual growth, I was consumed by books. Even though I said I've consumed everything, they've consumed me. And I have lost myself to them. And in reading of certain things, and we like to say that I've lost myself in the book. I've been transported to another world and experience and kind of travel that romanticized kind of thing, which is nice. Yeah. allow oneself to kind of take flight of imagination, yet one must be cautious so that it doesn't become such a reality that everything becomes in that same vein, that what I have read must be like, okay, omija tea is sweet. When? When? And if you haven't had, how sweet? If the tongue hasn't tasted it. Yeah. And so that flavor profile of words shifts and changes depending on various aspects. And then of course we also, we don't, we use the words, even though Mr. Webster had suggested that the meaning of the word is this. But we use it, according to our own dictionary, what the word means to me. And then the other person doesn't know what the word means to me. And so then they hear it on account of what that word means to them. Oh boy, let me tell you a story related to that. And you were there for
SPEAKER_02:that.
SPEAKER_01:So when I was in Rutgers, I made friends with some girl, her name was Ingrid, and she was telling me how she had a baby. She lived on Bush Campus. And she asked me one day after class, hey, can you help me move the crib? I was like, sure, I felt so bad, right? Right, yes. She's living by herself. She has a baby. She can't pick up the crib. I was like, so I call up my friend, Younghan, and I was like, hey, this is going to be fast. We're just moving the crib. We're just going to go move the crib from one room to the next. And let me tell you, talking about what the word means to them versus what the word means to me. That was a huge gap, wider than the Grand Canyon there, because when we got there, to our surprise, what was it? The crib. The crib. The actual crib. And
SPEAKER_00:those of you who are not of the era, the crib... is a house. The whole
SPEAKER_01:house.
SPEAKER_00:Our five minute journey turned
SPEAKER_01:into like four hours.
SPEAKER_00:We thought it was going to be a crib, but it was the
SPEAKER_01:crib.
SPEAKER_00:So move the whole house as opposed to one piece of furniture for the child, which, you know, you make an assumption of being small. Yeah, it's that. It absolutely is. We hear... the words according to our inner dictionary. And it's filtered also. To match. And in couples therapy, that's what comes up. That's not what I meant. Well, you said you hated me. But that's not what I meant. I don't mean, I don't meant like I hated you. I just, I was, you know, hated the moment. I didn't hate you. That one
SPEAKER_01:particular
SPEAKER_00:thing. Right. You know. But then for some
SPEAKER_01:reason, like you hate me completely. And so many times I'll be like, all right, I'm done with you then. Yeah. And then after some processing, it was like, it was that one specific moment when you
SPEAKER_00:did this one specific thing. Yeah. It's... That happens all the time. It's amorphous. The words, how they are conceived of... in the mind, how they are birthed into the world, and who's doing the child rearing, they're completely different realms. And and is a helpful thing, because and includes all those three. It includes how the word is conceived inside my mind. It includes, and includes the meaning that I, intent for the word to mean, and it includes the potential for the other person to understand it differently, completely differently. And there's a door for freedom, too, if you need to use the eject button. The and allows it, the and allows that. There's a word, And I can't conjure up now. But it's one of those magical words that has- Super cagifragilistic, espialidocious? Not that one. I'm dating myself for these things. There's a word that has two meanings, but in a very unique fashion, they're very opposite meanings. And I can't, for the life of me, Oh, the English language has a bunch of those homophones and homonyms and things like that. Words like here and here, how you spell it, bear and bear. One letter changes the whole meaning, and sometimes it's even spelled the same and the meaning is different, and that's where you have to look at the context. Cleave. Cleave, okay. Cleave as in to split apart and separate, and cleave as in to attach and hold on to. I cleave to this, right? And so if you just throw it out there, cleave. Just on the nature of it. Hey, can you cleave this? What do you mean? Do you want me to cut it off or do you want me to glue it? Can
SPEAKER_01:you see how this can create a complete, like if a parent tells a kid or an employer tells an employee, hey, can you cleave that? Right. And then you come back and you wanted it to be sewn together and they
SPEAKER_00:cut it. They're separated. That can
SPEAKER_01:just create a disaster.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Words are... provisional, they are to point to a reality, and they are to communicate, and they have this dual, as so much in this world does, this is not any news really, I think, to a thought-out mind. We live in a world of duality. Coin has two sides. Well, technically, some people, nitpicky will say it has three sides. And I forget what the edge is, but there's a name for it. But they understand the point. And this idea of that words are nothing. Because they... don't actually hurt. The word pain and fire don't burn and wet doesn't moisten anything. And yet, at the same time, the words can cripple a person. Destroy. Destroy and obliterate and scar for life. Understanding and spreading the mind to encompass that complete reality of the duality as not ensconced in one side and the other, not mired here and there, not kind of divided between here and there, but as a end. Yeah. I'm gonna make a big statement. It's the word for peace. End. My view, end. your view, my position, and your position. Not this blackmail thing or not this terrorist sort of thing, mine or yours. Open your hearts to the possibility of and. Put and in between words. Make it inclusive. Make it less divisive. Unite. Cleave. Watch one. Cleave. Yeah. I think be patient enough to see past your perspective and your point of view, right? Whatever topic you're talking about, I oftentimes tell people, well, if you're talking about an elephant, you have to really try to think Are you standing at the mountaintop or are you in the valley? And where is the elephant? Because where you stand and where the elephant is completely changes the perspective, right? At the mountaintop, it's the size of your thumb. This is patience. I think that sounds like a good topic for the next podcast. Patience. Patience. What is it? Many people say it's good,
SPEAKER_01:but then they tell me afterwards, but
SPEAKER_00:I don't
SPEAKER_01:have any of
SPEAKER_00:it. Right. What is it? Patience. How about that? Next time. Patience. Here on The World Through Zen Eyes. Until then. Until then. Take care of yourselves and each other.