Words are to thoughts what clothing is to the Invisible Man. They give invisible concepts shape and texture so that people can catch glimpses of ideas and ponder them. When clothed in words, thoughts become communicable. In one way or another, words seem to be responsible for the way humans understand every question of any importance at all. The assumption, then, is that words (or language) and truth are tied to one another. But are they really? Can words tell the truth about things? What about invisible things? What about God? Of what value is language to religious thought and experience?
All religions, as they use words to communicate, provide some way to understand the connection between language and truth. The question of language may be one of the most important questions a religion answers, possibly because religions themselves are Invisible Men which require words to make sense of them. Or perhaps the essence of religion lies in what cannot be verbalized.
In this essay, I will try (by making use of language, of course) to compare the Zen Buddhist and Christian positions on the relationship between words and truth. Are their views compatible? Are their understandings roughly the same or irreconcilably different? After describing the Zen and Christian understandings of this question, I will argue that despite extensive similarities, Zen and Christianity differ on essential points.
I just got back to my room after a few hours in the library. It’s been raining all afternoon, and I’ve scurried across campus like a half-drowned rat twice already. When I left the library just now I was grumbling to myself that I had to squelch my way through the rain yet again…my clothes were still damp from the previous walk, and I was a little mad about it not being cold enough to snow.
In that state of mind I started across O’Neill Plaza. After just a few steps, the St. Ignatius bell started ringing - it was five o’clock. The bell took me by surprise, and I looked up…
I suddenly realized that I was walking through a dark and stormy night. A real one. (Though, you must know that by “real” I mean something along the lines of “straight out of a story.”) Where was Miss Marple, or Dr. Watson, or Tintin, or any of the other immortal characters who haunt nights such as these? Surely there were banshees lurking about. At the very least a few gruff, trench-coated men pursuing some diabolical end must be about to round the corner of Gasson Hall.
Somehow, that bell transformed my understanding of the rain, the evening, and myself. I didn’t really expect Sherlock Holmes to turn up (though I’d be thrilled if he did), but I did remember that I am not merely one of ten-thousand students madly stuffing my brain with differentiation rules and Greek contract verbs. The walk from library to dorm is not just something that must be done so that I can check my email, change my shoes, and grab my flashcards before leaving again. These things are real enough, but equally (perhaps more?) real is the light mist softening the buildings and trees, drawing them close to one another. There is a magic in the wet branches as they narrow and darken into ebony twigs dripping silver raindrops onto the brick path.
“It’s a nice evening,” you say. “And you had a refreshing ten minute walk. What of it?”
The only way for a walk to be refreshing or for a moment to be meaningful is for it to refer to something greater than itself. This rainy evening in all its sogginess and mystery exists, and that fact begs the question, “Why?” Because the “why” is that God intentionally and lovingly created this very night, complete with rain and bells and fog, because every tree whispers some truth about him that goes all the way up to the heart of what reality is, I have a reason to treasure the water on my face and the cozy shining of the lampposts lining the road.
If the rain was a brute fact and nothing more, if it had no reference point, it if simply was (end of story), then it might still make me feel good, but any pleasure I derived from it would be merely a matter of chemicals, endorphins, and nerve endings. And if I was honest with myself about what that kind of pleasure really means, I would sink into despair as I contemplated this deconstructed definition of happiness.
The justification for loving the sting of raindrops and the sound of boots on pavement is that there is something behind them. The reason to shudder with delight, rather than grumble, at the prospect of a rainy walk is that God is real, the unifying principle of his universe is joy, and he is present in the way lamps shine through mist.
The bell is about to ring seven o’clock, and I’m about to go outside again, this time fully expecting to be shocked and transformed by what God has made on a rainy December night.
