Buddhism 401: Language Falls Flat

Politics is rarely polite. Civilization is often uncivilized. And language is hardly equipped to explain why. So just be nice. Stricter commandments may be easy to come by and easy to plaster on walls and gates, but the cost of strict enforcement is rarely worth the time it takes. So, why make things complicated when a simple rule of thumb will do? After all, aren’t the Buddhist precepts and the Christian commandments similar enough that they hardly bear endless repeating?

The main difference is literary, the contrasting roles of commandment and prohibition, and active voice versus passive voice, differences more of style than substance, the Western preference for direct action versus the Eastern predilection for unspecified involvement. After all, sometimes there is little action available except for jumping up and down, which rarely solves many problems and often creates new ones. In any case language is rarely equipped to help much.

In fact, meditation is the crowning achievement of Buddhism, by almost any measure. Some ‘schools’ emphasize it more than others, true, but all respect and encourage it, and Theravada has largely redefined itself as Vipassana, one of the more ubiquitous and modern forms of meditation, though I personally make not so much difference between them, except in the case of silent versus ‘guided’ meditations. Either way, language rarely explains much, but if it can ‘guide’ or show the way, then that is the proper role for it.