Words, Labels and Truth

Written on September 16, 2009 by Tom Stine

When I have time, I love to respond to my reader’s questions. I want to share a few recent emails I’ve exchanged with someone:

Reader:

Hello Tom,

Can I ask you a question? In your recent posting of your tweets, you said:

No matter what I write down, it isn’t true. No matter what I think, it isn’t true.

Adya also said the same thing in his book. This sentence basically contradicts itself. But I think maybe you are saying it is not “completely” true. Or you have a better elaboration?

My response:

Yes, the sentence does contradict itself. Unfortunately, I’m in the same boat as Adya or any other spiritual teacher, it’s just that I’m way too honest about this stuff (and so is Adya). EVERYTHING that is said with words is inherently untrue. It is a derived thing. The most obvious example, one that Adya uses a lot, is this: if you are thirsty, which do you want to drink? Real water, H20, or the word “water”? The word water refers to the real stuff. So, the word water is not real, it has no substance. It always refers to something else.

In this awakening business, you are always endeavoring to get to the truth of what you are. What we have all done for most of our lives is believe that the THOUGHTS we have about ourselves are what we are. And that is not true. We endeavor to always get to the heart of what we are looking at, the “truth” of it.

So, the word “I” is not what I am. Even if I observe this body and the sensations I “feel” from it, I can go further and see that this is not me. What am I? Ah, that cannot be answered in words. It can only be known.

The best that any spiritual teacher can do is use words to point you in the direction of truth. Period. We are using falsehoods, or derived things, thoughts and words, to point at truth. Or, as Ramana used to say, we have fallen into a thorn bush and are now covered in thorns. We then take one of the thorns and use it to pick out all the other thorns. Then we throw the last thorn away! His particular thorn is what he called “the I thought.” Discover that the “I” thought is not you was Ramana’s entire teaching.

I hope the above helps! Namaste…. Tom

My reader responds:

Your explanation is very helpful! But I still have some questions, so please bear with me. Basically nothing is describable by words. Words are just labels. Water can not be adequately described by words. For those who never know water, reading the wiki page about its attributes doesn’t help any. If there is a cup of water in front of me and I say “this is water” to those who know what real water is and agree to use the word “water” as its label, then the statement “This is water” must be a true statement. If this is correct, then what you said about thoughts and words is not completely correct. Spiritual teachers run into the same dilemma when trying to use words describe ultimate reality to people who don’t have direct experience. Oneness, Emptiness, Everythingness and etc after all only add more confusion and make them go nowhere. So I think what you said only can be confined to when talking about ultimate reality.

And my last reply:

I want to focus on two things you said. First:

If there is a cup of water in front of me and I say ‘this is water’ to those who know what real water is and agree to use the word ‘water’ as its label, then the statement ‘This is water’ must be a true statement.

What I would say is that “this is water” is as close to truth as a STATEMENT can get. The key is that statements are never correct. They are always an approximation to truth. Always. They are still never the truth. When you point at the water and say “this is water” it is still THE WATER ITSELF that has the truth in it. Not the words. Make sense?

Because, as you pointed out, we AGREE to use the word WATER as a LABEL for the stuff in the cup. Notice the chain of events: we create a word, water, and agree to use it to describe something.

Why so picky about this? Because human beings walk around believing that the words they hear in their head are real things. And worst of all, they believe that the word “I” means something real, meaningful, important. They think they ARE the word “I” and the thousands upon thousands of associations they have attached to that word: I am a man, I am good, I am miserable, I am happy, I am a great lover, I have an ugly body, etc. I, I, I.

And what is the truth? There is no I. Period. You are not a word, a thought, a belief, an idea. You aren’t anything. Hence, we say, you are nothingness. There is no “I” no matter how many words you attach to it.

FYI, Eckhart Tolle does a pretty nice job of dissecting “I” in A New Earth. He calls it ego, but same thing.

The second thing you mentioned that I want to focus upon:

Spiritual teachers run into the same dilemma when trying to use words to describe ultimate reality to people who don’t have direct experience. Oneness, Emptiness, Everythingness and etc after all only add more confusion and make them go nowhere. So I think what you said only can be confined to when talking about ultimate reality.

Ah, but here’s the bigger problem: even the water you see in the cup isn’t water in the cup. It is, to use your words, Ultimate Reality. Right there in the cup. So is the cup. Water is not only a label for the real thing, water, the actual physical water, H2O, can be seen as a “label” for what it really is….. NOTHINGNESS appearing as form.

It’s a bitch describing this stuff, but there you go. You do the best you can, and that’s what you get.

Let’s keep it simple: stick with something like paying attention to awareness. Just pay attention to it. Focus on it. Look at it. Ponder it. Inquire about it. If you go to Adyashanti’s website, he’s done a lot of satsangs in the past year where he discusses this a bunch. Get a few of them and listen. If I remember correctly, there was one entitled “Rest as Awareness” that was quite good.

Nisargadatta sat for 3 years with “the feeling of being” and simply sat and looked at it every which way until he was done. Whatever arose, he would look at it and inquire about it and see how it fit into the “feeling of being” and keep going and going. Honestly, it’s a process of exhaustion more than anything. That’s why the Buddha called it Nirvana. The word simply means cessation. You simply exhaust the tendency to go unconscious by sitting with what arises. It really is that simply. Hard to do, I admit, but really is that simply.

I hope all the above helps. Namaste.

18 Random Thoughts About Thoughts and Thinking

Written on May 7, 2008 by Tom Stine

credit: Torley

How cool! Some of my regular and new readers are having a lot of fun commenting on my recent post, Are All Thoughts Untrue? I have quite a few responses to make, but I felt it would be more interesting to do another article on thoughts and toss in a little bit on thinking, too. So, here is a random series of thoughts on the subject of thoughts. (Personally, I find it hilarious that we have thoughts about thoughts and thinking.)

1. What are thoughts? They are sounds and images passing through awareness. In other words, the sounds you hear and pictures you see “in your head” are all there is to thought. The energy of thought then gets translated into the body and becomes feelings. And really, there is nothing more to it than that. I think. *grins*
2. “You can get more stinkin’ from thinkin’ than drinkin’.” The San Francisco sage Joe Miller had a cool way with words, didn’t he? Point well made. It seems clear to me that thinking has far more in common with an addiction than anything else. “Hi. My name’s Tom. And I’m a think-aholic.”
3. Who is thinking these thoughts? No one. That’s the ultimate rub of spirituality. The “who” you think you are isn’t. Don’t believe me? Go looking for yourself. In and of itself, that could be all the spiritual practice you need.

credit: otisarchives3
4. Thinking is conditioned to the hilt. Whenever I studied psychology, I hated B.F. Skinner. I thought all that Behaviorist theory was nonsense. Well, old Burrhus was more right than I could have possibly imagined. Thoughts are incredibly conditioned by our environment. And we all know it, too. That’s why we say, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” and, “You parent the way you were parented,” and lots of other expressions. We are heavily conditioned by our families, school, church, society, you name it. Until, well, you start letting it all go. And then what? Well, something else starts seeping in.
5. I seem to have no control over my thoughts. If I had control over my thoughts, I would be able to choose what I’m going to think. I can’t. I can say, “I’m going to think about the ocean,” and then a lovely image of the ocean enters my mind, I may even daydream about walking on the beach. But I didn’t choose the image I saw, the daydream about walking on the beach just popped into my head, and then I had a flash of memory about needing to buy bread at the store. And for that matter, why did I say to myself, “I’m going to think about the ocean.”? My thoughts seem to arise from nowhere.
6. We call the “place” where thoughts occur “the mind.” But where is the mind? What is the mind? Show me your mind! Or better still, go looking for it. Point to it. See it with your eyes, hear it with your ears, taste it, smell it, touch it. You can’t? Interesting, very interesting. I would say the mind is a concept about, well, more concepts (thoughts). But no more real than the man in the moon.
7. Our thoughts create our reality. True or false? A very popular belief in modern spirituality is that the sum total of all one’s thoughts, feelings and beliefs directly and accurately creates your world. Change your thinking, and you can change your life. You’ve seen The Secret, right? But, is this true? I haven’t a clue. At times it does seem like the world is a direct reflection of my thinking. At other times, the world seems to be exactly the opposite. Some would argue that the world reflects my subconscious thoughts. Maybe so. However….
8. Is there a subconscious? Everyone sure likes to believe that there are thoughts outside of our conscious awareness that “stick around” somehow or another. We call this collection of thoughts our subconscious mind. But is there one? No way to know, really. Because as soon as I become aware of a “subconscious thought,” that thought is now conscious and no longer a subconscious thought. It seems we use this idea of a subconscious to refer to those thoughts that seem to repeat themselves. But how can I be sure they repeat? Maybe they spontaneously generate anew each time. No way to know. Thoughts, ideas and beliefs are slippery, are they not?
9. We place our identity in our thoughts. We think we are our thoughts. And that’s the trouble. We are not our thoughts. Just for a moment, notice the thoughts you are thinking. Are they you? Do they tell you who you are? Or are you somehow “before” the thoughts? If you add up all your thoughts about yourself, do they really define who you are?
10. You are not who you think you are. Ramana Maharshi instructed people to look at their thoughts and see that they all arise from the I-thought, the one core thought that says, “I am all of this stuff I’ve been thinking.” But are you? If you investigate the I-thought, inquiry into “what am I?” and sit with this, you begin to realize that you are not the I-thought. And then it finally dawns: you are not who you think you are. You have been pretending. You are the Void, the Awareness, the Presence, the Nothing, the Emptiness, the Now that is prior to all thought. And that is the where the spiritual journey ends. And a new life begins.

11. And thus the native hue of resolution
    Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
    And enterprises of great pith and moment
    With this regard their currents turn awry,
    And lose the name of action.
    As fate would have it, I read this bit of Shakespeare on a blog I love reading, Fake Steve Jobs (yeah, I’m a Mac fan). Perfect, just perfect: “the pale cast of thought.” Right on!
12. There is a difference between true and Truth. This one is a tough one, but I’ll give it a try. The Truth is, in my mind, synonymous with Reality or That Which Is. What is Reality? Good question. It is things as they truly are. And, I’m afraid, that is something that is beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond the mind. That’s just all there is to it. We make a great attempt at describing it in words, but we really can’t. All we can do is point someone in the direction of Truth.
13. True with a small “t” is more akin to right or correct. And that is problematic in the world to say the least! What is right? What is correct? I have no answers to these questions. It seems to me that it might be better to ask, “What is helpful? What is useful?”
14. “Truth is true, and only Truth is true.” This line from A Course in Miracles gets it right.
15. Maybe the issue isn’t whether thoughts are true. Maybe the real issue is that we believe our thoughts. As one of my friends, Takuin, pointed out in his comments, “The problem is the belief in the thought…. The belief in the thought causes suffering. It is devilish and subtle, because the perceived problems seem real and we want to get away from them. But we can never get away because they only exist in our minds. And besides, who is it that wishes to escape? The believer that believes in the perceived problem.”
16. It seems to me that believing a thought is about the same as saying “the thought is true.” Not to quibble, but what is the difference?
17. Working with, “no thought is true,” has lead to greater peace and happiness. I can’t get away from this one. The more I identify thoughts that I have accepted as true (should I say “thoughts that I believe?”), and then question the truth of them, the happier and more peaceful I become. Doing so is a part of Byron Katie’s The Work, a technique that I like. I strongly feel that it leads to greater happiness and peace.
18. I still think no thought is true. There, I said it. It is, as one commenter, Evan, put it, overly simplistic and too absolutist. But, I still like it. It works for me. If anything, the above “thoughts” on thinking are enough to leave one confused.

So there you go. Some random thoughts. Honestly, as I mentioned in the last point, I can’t really make heads nor tails out of all this thinking stuff. It seems to be an experience we all have, thoughts entering our awareness, passing through consciousness, to be replaced by new and different thoughts. Constantly changing, constantly moving. All ephemeral and difficult to pin down.

Please feel free to leave your comments, thoughts, ideas, whatever, below. I look forward to seeing what the above brought up for you. Namaste.