"Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree', or `that is a banyan tree', the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)
2 comments:
There's a philosopher named Thomas Hübl who says something similar: Basically, if I come to your house and you open the door, if you say to yourself, "Oh yes, I know this person. He's a man, named Mike, ___years old, married..." you're immediately beginning to build a box around who you believe me to be.
In one of Leo Buscaglia's books he describes the 'art teacher', who comes into class and draws a lollipop tree on the blackboard, instructing the class to follow suit. Now Johnny, he's climbed trees, fallen out of trees, dreamed in trees... so he grabs yellow and purple and green and red and black and he draws a TREE! Which is fine until the art teacher walks by.
Mike.
Hi Mike, thanks for stopping by. You cite some nice examples. Among (a veritable infinity) of others - though I should be careful here, since this too is an unfortunately "limiting" label :) - there is also Alfred Korzybski's "the map is not the territory" and "the word is not the thing." Goethe and his process-oriented "experience" of things perhaps comes closest to navigating the irreducibly foggy mist within which that which we call "objects" actually live. Much of the allure - and beauty - of photography for me is its ability to "point to" (never directly, but in Zen-like fashion) concepts that may take dozens (hundreds, thousands, ...) of words to convey. Neither is the territory, of course, and each is infused with own brand of mist, but what wondrous worlds image and word sometimes conspire to create! Thanks again for stopping by and planting a few more stepping stones.
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