When we come to Dharma with our ordinary mind, we tend to be a language fundamentalist. We take the words of the teachings to be real and concrete, forgetting that they are intended to turn us back in the direction of our own intimate, all-embracing embodiment right here and now, as our own authority for being ourselves. Being present in the true nature of our experience prompts us to bring forth words about it. But these words are not it. When we are not awake to the nature of thought and words, then every thought is a wall, every impulse is reaction, is colored by our past experiences that was similar to this one.
The character of a thought or a word is extracted and ossified in the moment. Mistaking it for the thing it describes cuts us off from the flow of experienced life….. actual, open and intimate in its nature, our very embodiment. Thoughts about our life can take us miles away from the momentary, in all its shining particulars, its actual blood-pulse-threads of our being – right here, now. Thinking divides this very wholeness into what’s in here and what’s out there. A sense of separation – me in here, the world out there – can come to pervade our whole life and cut us off from appreciating the nuanced, dynamic and emergent character of each moment.