When young, the mind keeps on asking “What is this?” Is this question a moment of learning or… the beginning of ignorance?
When the mind asks “What is this?” it pulls together several incoming streams of sensory information into a perceived – but still nameless – whole. You stumble upon an unknown aspect of reality (e.g. a flower), you take a sensory snapshot, and then you try to label it. “What is it?” you wonder as you try to classify, codify, and categorize the unknown.
This is an entirely legitimate learning process, but it comes at a cost. As soon as the question is answered, the Nameless is named. The incoming streams of sensory information (the visual, the auditory, the olfactory, the tactile, etc.) are tied into a Gordian knot of conceptual stability. What was previously a phenomenon of nature becomes a word. Once a given aspect of reality is labeled, the mind is made and, often, is closed shut. A rose becomes an idea. A rose becomes the word “rose” with all the expectations and the associations that we connect to it. We now know its look, its smell and we no longer pause to notice it.
Is this the inevitable innocence of learning or the onset of conceptual blindness? It’s both! Knowledge both sets us free and imprisons us. After all, a cup that is full can hold no more water.
What’s the solution?
Interpretive silence: witness the namelessness of what is, in all its suchness, without bothering to name it. At least now and then leave that door into your mind ajar!
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PsychCentral (November 29, 2009)
I think one of the things that hold people back in the area of education is that they don’t go into it with an open mind, willing to put their prior experiences and information on the back burner. You can’t always be the expert.
well put, expertise hopefully involves a baseline of tentativeness. thanks for your thoughts.
As an educator with years of PD and extra classes behind my degree, I respectfully disagree.
We can “name” as you say,
And still keep an open mind,
Particularly if our other experiences or educational opportunities have given us alternate “names” for the same phenomenon. Yes?
Peace!
Thanks, Sunflower. I am open to your perspective. Thank you for filling my mind with alternatives. Are you?
I can use any one of the five fingers on my right hand to point the moon and as soon as I do, my (verbal) finger (i.e. whichever alternative name I use) eclipses the very moon I point to. A description is never that which it describes. As a civilization, we tend to confuse the two (the description and that which it describes). As a result, we live more in the reality of symbols than in the reality that these symbols symbolize. That’s why we keep reminding ourselves to smell the roses…
Peace to you too!
I just read a book on the Open Focus Brain and it suggest that it is useful to have an objective focus as well as sensory focus (immersed, diffused) at the same time.
My personal take is that there is value in objectifying so that we can plan and communicate. The problem is that we tend to get stuck in our heads by not using our sensory data. This imbalance is a big problem that leads to anxiety, depression etc.
Raymond Bokenkamp
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Yes, well stated. Thanks.
Many thanks for your very sophisticated contribution here on your website – with less words you’ve started a big process of meaningful ideas. Hartmut Rast, London
Thank you, Sir, and thanks to John Grohol, the owner/operator/mind behind PsychCentral.
So true…everything is no less amazing just because we have a name for it.
Yes, Dan. Thank you.
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