On my "business card," "Soliloquist" follows after my name. Yes, it is humorous and people find it amusing; I find it amusing. But it is also quite true: I talk to myself quite frequently, though usually when I'm alone in the forest or in the car. However, when I talk to myself around people, I think that they think I'm talking to someone on a phone stuck deep in my ear or somewhere else. When I read, I often read aloud to myself, which uses one more sense, allowing me to better comprehend what I'm reading. Some of the stuff I read is dense and abstract, which makes sense because I'm dense and abstract, and perhaps here like attracts like; such texts "speak" to me. I have waded through so many esoteric texts with unflailing interest; things that no one in their right mind would want to read. This could lead to a right-brain/left-brain discussion but that I think would be too counter-intuitive at this point (and that's supposed to be wry and you're supposed to appreciate my wryness).
One perhaps realizes the inherent lack of reality in and of speech if one observes it and oneself and other selves over many years. Speech is chatter/chitta. It can be communication but mostly isn't. It is good for fixing broken things and overall surviving. It is a marketplace commodity. Ancient hieroglyphs were inventory and shopping lists and invoices. It was not used to convey essence. I meditated silently many years, beginning with Christian contemplation as a child, moving to Rosicrucian "exercises" (like "using my mind" to make a candle flame rise and fall) as a teen, then Theosophical "metaphysical/mystical" meditation (not unlike Christian contemplation in its context-orientation) through my 20s, then to all sorts of Buddhist approaches (zazen and vipassana). I still "sit" but in a context which is now more my own than of "Buddhism." The primary focus for me for a long time was to simply see how "I worked," i.e., how my mind and overall organism, including speech, functioned. I suppose I learned a lot; just don't ask me what it is. It's not like that. It's more like the "no-knowledge" of the Daoist wuzhi, touched upon in my previous post here.
The problem is: we know something but we never really know enough to be able to say anything accurately, i.e., completely. Nothing is adequately comprehended. Neils Bohr said something to the effect that we can have either accuracy or clarity but only one or the other, never both. That kind of ties in here. David Miller, a professor at Pacifica made the point that as soon as one says one thing as "true," it is necessarily untrue; I take that to perhaps express that there is no defining, for defining necessarily excludes essential aspects of reality. Being a person with various social responsibilities, I cannot simply "retire to the hermitage" (though maybe such is impossible anyway, for we "bring the world with us" wherever we may go to escape it). For me, there is perhaps one rule that I always try to practice: kindness and love towards others. Most of the time I fail miserably but sometimes I do not. I am one of the fortunate ones for whom life, in spite of its weltschmerz, or "world pain" (also noted in previous posts), holds an upward turn. But also, as I too often say, "Too much irony makes one overwrought."
So, I overuse speaking at times, and just about always retrospectively note that I should have kept my mouth shut, not so much because I may have said the proverbial "wrong thing," but because people hear only what they can hear, sometimes less than that, and rarely more. And I tend to expect too much and too much comprehension of the human condition. And I am too abstract and too cynical and sometimes too sarcastic, and humorour when I should be serious, and serious when I should be humorous, so what's a guy to do? How does one convey care and love to others? Genuineness? No, probably oversentimentality, downright corniness, and teary emotionality. People love a good drama, and, what's worse, believe it. Ya gotta be able to pump that shit out right from the heart, believe me. In our culture, even a nice Buddhist "warm smile" is generally unseen, if not misinterpreted. All accuracy is necessarily lost in clarity, so be clear and get over it. You have not sold or otherwise lost your soul. You just have to learn to love bacon (which is easy for me since I was raised on it).
One perhaps realizes the inherent lack of reality in and of speech if one observes it and oneself and other selves over many years. Speech is chatter/chitta. It can be communication but mostly isn't. It is good for fixing broken things and overall surviving. It is a marketplace commodity. Ancient hieroglyphs were inventory and shopping lists and invoices. It was not used to convey essence. I meditated silently many years, beginning with Christian contemplation as a child, moving to Rosicrucian "exercises" (like "using my mind" to make a candle flame rise and fall) as a teen, then Theosophical "metaphysical/mystical" meditation (not unlike Christian contemplation in its context-orientation) through my 20s, then to all sorts of Buddhist approaches (zazen and vipassana). I still "sit" but in a context which is now more my own than of "Buddhism." The primary focus for me for a long time was to simply see how "I worked," i.e., how my mind and overall organism, including speech, functioned. I suppose I learned a lot; just don't ask me what it is. It's not like that. It's more like the "no-knowledge" of the Daoist wuzhi, touched upon in my previous post here.
The problem is: we know something but we never really know enough to be able to say anything accurately, i.e., completely. Nothing is adequately comprehended. Neils Bohr said something to the effect that we can have either accuracy or clarity but only one or the other, never both. That kind of ties in here. David Miller, a professor at Pacifica made the point that as soon as one says one thing as "true," it is necessarily untrue; I take that to perhaps express that there is no defining, for defining necessarily excludes essential aspects of reality. Being a person with various social responsibilities, I cannot simply "retire to the hermitage" (though maybe such is impossible anyway, for we "bring the world with us" wherever we may go to escape it). For me, there is perhaps one rule that I always try to practice: kindness and love towards others. Most of the time I fail miserably but sometimes I do not. I am one of the fortunate ones for whom life, in spite of its weltschmerz, or "world pain" (also noted in previous posts), holds an upward turn. But also, as I too often say, "Too much irony makes one overwrought."
So, I overuse speaking at times, and just about always retrospectively note that I should have kept my mouth shut, not so much because I may have said the proverbial "wrong thing," but because people hear only what they can hear, sometimes less than that, and rarely more. And I tend to expect too much and too much comprehension of the human condition. And I am too abstract and too cynical and sometimes too sarcastic, and humorour when I should be serious, and serious when I should be humorous, so what's a guy to do? How does one convey care and love to others? Genuineness? No, probably oversentimentality, downright corniness, and teary emotionality. People love a good drama, and, what's worse, believe it. Ya gotta be able to pump that shit out right from the heart, believe me. In our culture, even a nice Buddhist "warm smile" is generally unseen, if not misinterpreted. All accuracy is necessarily lost in clarity, so be clear and get over it. You have not sold or otherwise lost your soul. You just have to learn to love bacon (which is easy for me since I was raised on it).
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