Labels as limitations

When I was nine months old, I used to point at objects and ask my mom, “See that…?” she would then fill in the appropriate label: banana, car, table, etc. And I would finish my sentence, using the new word ie, “See that banana?”

As a small boy, I found this immensely helpful in building a vocabulary I could use to communicate. There was great power in knowing the name of an object. Regardless of the objects function, I could now define it, request it, or reject it. I had been given a handle my mind could grab onto. That thing is a banana, but that other thing, is a table.

There are many tales and legends about the power of someone or something’s true name. This concept stretches through magic and mysticism, back to antiquity. The idea being that a true name will represent the true nature of the person or object. By knowing this true name, you have great power over the subject.

But can a name, or a label, define anything? Does the word banana represent the sun soaked, rain drenched environment of it’s birth? Does it reflect the yellow of it’s ripe skin? Does the word prepare you for the experience of a banana? For the taste and texture of it’s fruit? Of course not. The complexity of the banana transcends our convenient label for it.

Yet we are often like little children labeling everything we see. That is a car. That is a table. That is bad. This is good. He is stupid. I am handsome. She is fat. This is boring. That is worthless. We are obsessed with defining everything. We label and categorize every experience, every object, every person, and every sensation we encounter. These easy answers may allow us to communicate easily with each other, but they rob us of understanding.

When you label something, you define it. When you define something you have decided upon your experience of it. You will see it as you have labeled it, good, bad, or ugly. You will lose your ability to see truly, to understand deeply, and to experience fully.

Labeling over experiencing, is just a way to distance yourself from your own life. It is a way of putting something in a box, so that it can be neatly filed away. But nothing can be truly labeled, understood, and filed away. The deepest truths of the universe exist as paradoxes, only understood when easy answers and labels are eschewed. The universe is not just all that exists in physical space, it is the very space between, around, and in. It is the object and the context. It is the seen, and the unseen that makes the seen possible. The Alpha, and the Omega.

The birth of Zen began with a single flower. There were no words. There were no labels. The Buddha held up the flower, and said nothing. Most of his disciples saw a flower, and so they saw nothing. One man looked deeply, and truly understood. By rejecting an easy and convenient label, he could see its true nature. He learned its true name; the name that cannot be spoken. Zen Buddhism was born in that moment of understanding.

I still find myself labeling things. See that beautiful woman? Feel this pain? Hate this traffic? The little boy is still there, still trying to label everything. But now I can give up childish things. I can drop the label, look deeply, and truly see.

We are so much more than our labels, our names, or the roles we play. We are like that flower, infinite in depth, unique in expression, and connected with everything. Our true name cannot be spoken, only understood.