Meaning is Relational
If I were to ask you
which of the following would you prefer, 1 or 10
how would you answer the question? Could you really answer the question? Perhaps you could if you had some kind of preference for one of the numbers over the other. But for all intents and purposes, you really couldn’t give a meaningful answer. Why not? Because the real question doesn’t ask about the nouns 1 or 10 but the adjectives 1 and 10.
So now if I were to ask you
which do you prefer, 1 papercut or 10 papercuts?
you now can answer the question because you have context. Things in themselves have, by definition, no context, nothing to with them. But once a thing has a context, it has a relationship, and it’s the relationship that bridges your consciousness with the things, which is how meaning arises. Meaning, then, is a relationship between things, specifically things related within consciousness, which is itself a network of relationships.
So how does this abstract philosophical observation relate to meditation, to Zen? Well, mindfulness is about relationships: that things relate, how they relate, what their underlying relationship to other things unfolds. If in the process of meditating you increase your awareness of relationships, meaning grows out of that process. Life vivifies through that meaning. It helps us realize that the cliche query “What is the meaning of life?” has no meaning because it demands meaning in itself, which is devoid of any relation to anything else. Rather, the answerable question is “What are the meanings of what happens in life”.
Our interactivity with the world, through observation or action, is the relation out of which we seek and find meanings. Any practice which increases our awareness of things, increases our relationships, which increases the meanings potent in the stream of happenings we call life.
Zen is relational. Meaning is relational. Zen is Meaning.
