In Zen we say that the three worlds of form, formlessness, and desire are “nothing but mind,” which means that we create reality through the way we understand—or misunderstand—it. We create the world we inhabit through the way we use our minds. Language, with its shape-shifting, shape-molding qualities, is also world creating, and as practitioners we do well to pay close attention to the subtle ways that it guides our understanding and our experience. 

Recently, a fellow practitioner brought to my attention the concept of “indexicals”: linguistic expressions that reference different objects depending on the context in which they occur. The words I or today are indexical because when I use the pronoun I, I’m referring to me, Zuisei, or Vanessa. But when you use the pronoun, you’re referring to you, Rosa, or Charlie, or Hiram, and the same is true for the eight billion or so Is that inhabit our world. Likewise, when I use the word today today, I’m referring to November 4, 2022 . If I use the word today tomorrow or a week from now, it will mean something else. 

Philosophers and linguists would say that there are certain classes of words that are more specifically indexical than others. Personal pronouns (“I,” “we,” “you,” etc.), demonstrative pronouns (“this,” “that”), and deictics (“here,” “there,” “now”) are all context-dependent, as are many other terms that rely on tone or punctuation to be understood. “Sit!” is an order, while “Sit, my dear sir?” expresses disbelief. “Oh sit, for heaven’s sake!” reflects annoyance. But if we think about it, all language is referential and therefore indexical, because the words we use are always pointing to ever-changing aspects of reality. I today is not the same as I five or ten years ago. It’s not the same as my I twenty years from now. In truth, the I that just wrote this sentence is not the same I that began this piece. How could it be, when there is no fixed I anywhere to be found?

“You see me through you.”

With a little work, all of us can understand the principle of indexicality. Let’s say that one morning I call out to you, “No, no, no! Don’t eat that!” The that may be referring to some green leaves I left on the table after making a flower arrangement, my last chocolate chip cookie, or a glass marble, to name just a few of hundreds or thousands of possibilities. I, Zuisei, am telling you, a baby or the neighbor’s dog or my best friend, to refrain from doing something I don’t want you to do because it will hurt you or me. It’s clear that by itself, the word that means nothing, and therefore needs context to be understood. As far as I’m concerned, this is a kind of magic—that without a moment’s hesitation you, the other being present in the room (who may not even share my knowledge of language or even my species), will immediately know what I’m referring to when I exclaim and in some way point to whatever it is I want you to avoid. We’re constantly deriving meaning from the world around us and respond congruently—mostly—to what we experience. And we do so, even though a lot of the time we have very little information to go by. This is wonderful—until it isn’t.

Take a phrase like “I love you,” the kind of statement we make all the time in all sorts of different contexts. If you’ve ever uttered the words, you most likely assumed you knew what you meant when you said them. You knew who you (I) were. You knew the you you were addressing. And you knew, at least vaguely, what the word love implied. But did you? Did you really know? 

Your idea of me is fabricated with materials you have borrowed from other people and from yourself. What you think of me depends on what you think of yourself. Perhaps you create your idea of me out of material that you would like to eliminate from your own idea of yourself. Perhaps your idea of me is a reflection of what other people think of you. Or perhaps what you think of me is simply what you think I think of you.

That’s Thomas Merton in No Man Is an Island. A condensed version of this quote might be: “You see me through you.” We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are or worse, as we think we are. When I see you, what I see are my wants, my wishes, my habits and well-worn memories. I can’t see you because my I is in the way. I make you in my own image and fix you in a now that is long gone. Is it any wonder that we misconstrue each other’s words or get confused about our own intentions? I barely know my I. I skim over now. To know you… well, I think you get the picture.

This misapprehension extends to everything we perceive, from cars to countries. Yet it’s in our relationships that the gap between wish and reality is most glaring because we’re so invested in wanting others to be the way we imagine them to be.

Sometimes seeing clearly feels to me a bit like trying to count the freckles of the driver in a speeding car. But I think that’s only because we insist on staking our ground with our words, our beliefs, our ideas—especially the idea of a fixed, independent self—and kick and scream when anyone tries to budge us. As one of my teachers memorably said, “The self can’t move at the speed of impermanence.” Neither can our words, unless we let them do what they, like no-self, are capable of doing: flowing, changing, and adapting to a reality that won’t stand still because it’s not its nature.

The poet Galway Kinnell once said: “Never mind. The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love.” Maybe, when we talk about love, we should say “Let our blind spots fall in love. Let the stranger in me fall in love with the stranger in you. Let the I that I don’t yet see fall in love with the you I haven’t discovered and can’t even imagine.” That would be a more realistic way of relating to one another. And ironically, more loving too.

Practically Speaking

• Begin by assuming that when you see something or someone, what you’re seeing is some reflection of yourself.
• Decide you want to see more deeply, more truly, more lovingly.
• Ask yourself, “What is this? or “Who are you?”
• Follow with, “Am I sure?”
• Refuse to be satisfied with the easy answer.
• Ask again, “What is this?” “Who are you?”
• Repeat as necessary (that is, often and sincerely).
• Never stop asking.