*Are You Addicted to Language?*

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A question for those who consider themselves "heavy users" do you remember when language really got a grip on you? Was there a time when language use/consumption was relatively unimportant in your life?

I think I was about eight and a half when I got the bug. I was ill in bed with mumps for a couple of weeks, and my mother brought me lots of books from the library to pass the time.

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You're absolutely right. It's true that I have a tendency to believe buddhism is "right" about a lot of things!

But perhaps zen buddhist koans and meditation were a kind of forerunner for the deconstructionist, post-structuralist etc analyses of the last 80-100 years which enable us to detach ourselves from language, ( with language itself ); to become aware that language is not "us", not simply a representation of the world, but something completely different, a part of reality itself.

Perhaps language evolving in this direction, ( deconstructionist, post-structuralist analysis etc ), is so successful, ( proliferates ), because language can only grow well if people don't "identify" too easily/comfortably with language. Perhaps language gets bonzai'd if people think that there is no mismatch between language and their "selves"/lives/reality. So long as people don't experience language as inadequate/inaccurate/limited there is no creation of language, at least not much.

Detachment from/a "critical" attitude towards language makes the mismatch visible, and buddhists used to do it with meditation, and koans, ( which are like mini-versions of deconstructionalist dissections/exposures of language's limits/boundaries ). Dissatisfaction with language as a supposedly direct transposition of reality into symbol is what makes language flourish. The dissatisfaction creates space for language to spread out into.

It is perhaps noteworthy that for a spiritual practice ostensibly dismissive of language buddhism actually resulted in the writing of many many texts, rewrites, interpretatons, wordy explorations of words.

And whereas language had a pretty one-dimensional "life" for thousands of years, ( as a supposedly "simple" one-to-one representation of reality ), the post-structuralist analyses etc, have made it two dimensional. It is gaining solidity, boundaries/limits and internal heirarchies like a cell, with cell walls.
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Last edited by ouinon on 11 May 2009, 10:08 am, edited 2 times in total.

This thread is starting to look like it's my blog!

I think that we/humans, ( our special human brains ), may be a substrate for the birth, evolution, growth and reproduction of the life-form which is language, in the same way as carbon and other molecules were/are substrate for the birth etc of plant and animal life.

Servants of the Word!

Feel free to comment!

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"the view that Buddhism disregards language is an oversimplification":
http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/G101SECT1

yes, I know you said 'ostensibly'

Reminds me of the man lost in some rural outback. He asks a local "How do I get to such-and-such a place?". The local replies "Well it is possible to get there, but you don't want to start from here.."

Thank you for that link. Very interesting. Just yesterday I might have wanted to debate the picture it paints of buddhism, but today feel somewhat differently about language, hence my last two posts above.


You lost me!

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Haven't you heard of the Buddhist teachers in remotest Tibet who have never written a single word? Thought not....

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When my parents bought our first computer (with internet access). I became obsessed with the english language and spent every waking moment reading articles, talking on forums and looking up words. I remember when I first started learning english in school, it felt so good actually being the best of the class for once.

It's come to the point where my english is better than my dutch (I live in Belgium).

Does anyone else have this thing where they like to use a word/words for the emotion they associate with it and not because it's relevant?

I do this to an excessive degree when writing. I make up lines or lyrics that have no literal meaning whatsoever. Something lying in my head that I just thought up:

'Under ultraviolet heat
The sands will burn their syndrome into me...'

This has no meaning to me, and I don't know where it came from.