Zen and the Art of Language
How we can use words to quiet the mind and find inner peace
Words hold great power.
They have the power to help you transcend your reality.
Change your mind.
Change your life.
Change politics.
Change the world.
Magic spells, sacred writing, prayers, and mantras are a bridge between the unseen and the seen.
They harness the magical power of words in cultures across the whole world.
A Tibetan Lama said,
The forms of divine life in the universe and in nature break forth from the seer in vision, from the singer as sound. Their existence is the characteristic of the priestly power of the seer-poet. What sounds from his/her mouth, is not the ordinary word. It is mantra, the compulsion to create a mental image, power over that which IS, to be as it really is in its pure essence.
You could say that language is mankind’s greatest creative achievement. In the beginning, each word transformed reality into the vibrations of the human voice.
‘Through these vocal creations man took possession of the world — and more than that: he discovered a new dimension, a world within himself.’
Language allows us to differentiate; it enables cooperation between people; the development of complex ideas; it allows us to share our inner worlds with each other; sound vibrations can move us to tears with their beauty.
You could say that language is mankind’s greatest creative achievement.
According to science, there are four fundamental forces at work in the universe. The strong force, gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak force. The strong force is responsible for binding together the fundamental particles of matter to form larger particles. The weak force is responsible for radioactive decay (the sun!). The electromagnetic force keeps electrons orbiting around the nucleus. Gravity makes matter clump together in planetary systems and keeps our feet on the floor. All four forces work to hold the physical world together.
Physicists have shown that 95% of the universe is invisible; that includes all this supposedly solid stuff, and us as well. This invisible bit is known as a quantum field and apart from a teeny weeny neutron and proton, it is what fills every atom, and atoms are what everything is made of. The quantum field lies at the deepest level of the natural world.
The Hindu art of Ayurvedic medicine says that primordial sounds are threads that connect the universe, that the body is held together by sound.
Dr. Deepak Chopra explains ‘that when two electrons are held together in a helium atom, an invisible but powerful bond holds them together despite distances that are greater, proportionally, than the distance separating the earth and the sun. Ayurveda teaches that primordial sound is the mysterious link that holds the universe together in a web that is the quantum field.’
In the Star Wars saga, the Jedi masters called it The Force.
In Chinese philosophy, it is called the Tao. Lao Tzu uses poetry to describe it in the Tao Te Ching:
There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite.
Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.
It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.
In Ancient Britain, the Anglo-Saxons called it Wyrd. Brain Bates spent his life researching its mysteries and chose to share his discoveries as a story, The Way of Wyrd. He describes it as:
A web of fibers that flow through the entire universe, linking absolutely everything — each person, object, thought or happening — no matter how small.
In Zen, practitioners aim to uncover this unifying field within themselves and experience their lives from there rather than through the narrow lens of their conditioned mind.
We all possess the incredible ability to use language, but like the tabloid press, we are overrun with pervasive, constant, and mundane words.
The mind talks constantly, a lot of what it says fills us with fear and anxiety.
The mind is useful like our hand is useful. Language is a tool, but we need to be able to put it down. Imagine if our hand kept hold of a hammer after it had used it to bang in a nail. What if it just kept on banging everything? The hammer would cease to be useful and become a problem. If we had been banging the hammer since we were a small child we might even consider it normal, especially if everyone else was always banging away with their hammers too. We might need to learn how to let it go, put it down.
Zen trains the mind and brings its use of language under control. It does this through meditation.
‘There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.’
One meditation practice uses words to present the mind with a puzzle that cannot be solved through rational thought. The Zen Koan can only be answered from the quantum field, the Tao, the Wyrd, the buddha nature. After a while, the conditioned mind becomes exhausted with trying to solve the Koan and gives up, allowing the practitioner to experience directly, this field that is within everything. A Zen master said,
It has been asked, “If one wants to practice the path now, what technique should one perform to attain liberation?”
People who see buddhahood immediately realise the mind source without performing techniques. When you clearly see buddha nature, this very mind is Buddha, because it is neither illusory nor real.
Words have the power to show the way, they are not the way but they are a tool we can use. Words can make me a voice in your mind. We can be friends, though we may never meet. You can choose to extend this narrative into your life if these words inspire you to do so and begin to know this living force yourself.
Bibliography
Allen-Coombe, Janet, ‘Weaving the Way of Wyrd: An Interview with Brian Bates’, Shaman’s Drum, no.27, Spring 1992
Bates, Brian, The Way of Wyrd, paperback edn. (London: Century Publishing Co. Ltd, 1984)
Chopra, Deepak, MD, Perfect Health, The complete Mind/Body Guide (New York: Harmony Books, 1990)
Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, paperback edn. (London: Rider & Co. 1969)
Hui-chung, ‘No Performance’, in, The Teachings of Zen, ed. by Thomas Cleary (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc. 1998)
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. by Stephen Mitchell (London: Frances Lincoln Ltd., 1999)
Lucas, George, Star Wars: Skywalker Saga, 9 films 1977–2019 (USA: Lucasfilm)
