Name something in the world that is not connected to anything else. Can you do it?
As I write this, I am looking at the grass in my backyard. I know what I mean when I say ‘grass’. You probably do too, in a general way. But do you mean the same thing that I do when I use the term ‘grass’ to describe what I see in my backyard, right now?
‘Grass’ is a category. As we’ve discussed before, categories and labels are just artificial constraints that we humans put on certain little pieces of a vast and deeply connected reality, ‘pieces’ that we think we can distinguish. We do this because we can’t seem to help ourselves – it is part of our nature.
The trouble is, once we have categorized something we then think we have defined it, and what’s worse, understand it. We begin to view the ‘thing’ we categorized as an object unto itself, something that is separate from all other objects that we recognize and define.
And that mistake helps us miss an obvious truth about reality, one that we can all recognize with just a bit more attention: ‘things’ blur together.
Anything we call a ‘thing’ is constantly changing, constantly shifting, constantly rearranging. And any form we might recognize at this moment is inevitably a function of the conditions that brought it about and maintain it right now. And these conditions are always on the move, too! So, not only is each thing changing moment by moment, but everything it’s connected to is also changing moment by moment.
That is what Buddhists are pointing to when they say all things are impermanent. It is a perspective that goes very far back in Eastern human history, long before Siddhartha Gautama walked the Earth, but it is one that most of us continue to overlook each moment of our lives.
What is more, with a little bit of extra thought and reflection one also recognizes that these principles of impermanence and interconnection apply to the things you and I would call ‘Me’ and ‘You’. We are not the cosmic exceptions to this fundamental process of the universe; we are that process itself.
Certain things are made easier in our lives because we have categories. This mountain is high. This river is wide. This thorn is sharp. This sun is bright. Humans recognize these statements to be true, and they provide information to us that we consider useful.
Tomorrow, however, the mountain might be a little less high, the river a bit more narrow, the thorn snapped off, the sun behind clouds. Are these things still what we said they were, despite these changed conditions? Yes, of course. And yet, no. And yet, yes!
If we humans didn’t use categories, how could I search for a ‘strawberry’ to fill my hungry belly? How could I tell others what I am looking for, so that they also can help search for strawberries? Categories have an important function in human lives.
And yet, the essential world is category-free. It needs no names, no colors, no smells, no ‘things’ defined. A strawberry forms, and it just is. It is not disconnected with the world around it, as if it were something detached from its plant, from the soil around the plant’s roots, from the microbes in the soil that provide the plant nutrients, or from this very moment in time.
The strawberry is a ‘thing’ only to me, the human who is hunting for it so that he can eat it. To the universe, it is the universe. The true state of the strawberry, for want of a better word, is ‘unclassifiable’.
It is apparent that even for many Buddhists, putting aside categories is a hard thing to do. Buddhism is a human effort to share the understanding of a wonderfully non-human fact. And as humans, we just can’t help ourselves in being totally human: we categorize, theorize, debate, discuss, determine and discriminate. Buddhists create new branches of Buddhism. Buddhists philosophize on the writings of the past. Buddhists create rituals and chantings and positions and hierarchies. Some Buddhists create holiness just as other humans create holiness.
By doing so, of course, we humans can miss the point.
Buddhists learn there are 5 Aggregates. There are 52 stages through which one arrives at Buddha-hood. There are 100 negations, 3 jewels, 6 paramitas, 7 factors of awakening, 5 remembrances, 3 Dharma seals, and on and on and on. I haven’t felt a need to learn them all because I know we humans, despite our best intentions, have drawn many, many lines in the shifting sands of moment-by-moment reality.
At the instant of my first realization, there were no numbers (except perhaps ‘one,’ which arrived later). There were no aggregates, no factors, no negations. There were no unwieldy Sanskrit words, and no doubt in understanding. There was only This.
In that moment, the categories I dutifully learned and used throughout my human life were revealed to be utterly ridiculous, and my deep concern about those categories even more so. One of the first thoughts that came back into view was, “Ah! Now I understand what is meant by delusion.”
How much do you like your categories? How much do you cling to them to interpret reality? How much do you depend on them to label and arrange things? How much does it disappoint you that they are constantly changing, constantly giving you pause, constantly up for debate and misunderstanding by others?
I perceive names, colors, smells, and plenty of other ‘things’. My mind still likes to categorize what I find and place it in a functional system that I can use to waltz through life with other humans. I am often playing the role of a scientist, and categories are useful to scientists.
But things are certainly different for me now. I can recognize that categories and distinctions are a feature of me as a human and not at all an inherent feature of the essential world. They are just lines we draw in the sand of a vast beach. I can observe my brain playing tricks on me, and I continue to laugh at myself for the foolishness that my conditioning delivers almost every moment of every day.
Here, try this: drop off the categories for a while. That’s my recommendation to you. See the world right here in front of you, blowing on your cheeks and shining in your eyes. Mountains are high. Rivers are wet. Thorns are sharp. The sun is bright. You don’t need categories to experience the truth of that.
For the time being, put your categories aside and see what else you might learn.
