The Mind's Capacity to Draw Boundaries
La capacidad de la mente para trazar límites
A reflection on how the mind creates the world of separate objects by drawing boundaries, and how observation can dissolve that very process.
The Mind's Capacity to Draw Boundaries
A reflection on how the mind creates the world of separate objects by drawing boundaries, and how observation can dissolve that very process.
I wouldn't say duality is a product of language. It is definitely connected to language, but the more fundamental thing is the mind's capacity to draw boundaries. Making something into an object can only happen by drawing a boundary.
The foundation of duality
Think of the yin-yang symbol. It is essentially boundaries: black, white, a line separating them. The image shows the very foundation of duality, the fact that we can draw a boundary and separate something from something else. From there, we can name things "black" and "white." But they are two sides of the same coin. The fundamental thing is the mind's capacity to draw a boundary and separate something from something else. Language is simply the way we communicate, internally with ourselves or externally with others, about the world of form that the mind has broken up into objects.
Transcending through observation
So how do we transcend that? By observing. Notice that you only experience the yin-yang image as two colors with a separating line when you think about it. Even in perception, the boundary that separates it as an object exists only in the mental space.
What science found when it zoomed in
If you were to zoom in, and this is what science has done everywhere, the paradigm of the atomic universe collapsed. The atomic model is still a useful representation, and it is still taught in school as the foundation of reality, but it is false. The more scientists zoomed into the atomic level, where they literally thought the whole universe was made of objects, really small objects, the more the picture changed. First they found electrons, protons, and neutrons. Then they were able to look a little closer and realized it is empty space. It appears like an object, but it is empty space. Through observation, the paradigm collapses.