How language shapes our thoughts (again)

David Hinton: An Ethics of Wild Mind

David Hinton begins his new book, Wild Mind, Wild Earth, with a poem by Tang dynasty poet Du Mu

Egrets

Robes of snow, crests of snow, and beaks of azure jade,
they fish in shadowy streams. Then startling away into
flight, they leave emerald mountains for lit distances.
Pear blossoms, a tree-full, tumble in the evening wind.

鹭鸶
(唐)杜牧
雪衣雪发青玉嘴，群捕鱼儿溪影中。
惊飞远映碧山去，一树梨花落晚风。

He then explains:

There’s this big leap from the egrets leaving emerald mountains to suddenly pear blossoms, a tree-full, tumble in the evening wind. There’s no kind of logical connection between those. There’s a kind of imagistic connection, because the egrets are small, fluttering white things going up; and pear blossoms are small, white things fluttering down.

Egrets take flight like scattering pear blossoms…

It is a beautiful conceit we always find in poetry— like in Japan, how cherry blossoms are said to scatter like snowflakes in the wind or that the crying of the cicadas in late summer sound like rain.

In Zen literature, there is a recurring motif of an empty-mirror mind. Hinton writes that “When thought stops, that moment of awakening, we are wholly present in life as moment-by-moment experience of incandescent perceptual immediacy.” This is something related to the Zen Beginner’s Mind. To stand fully present in the moment looking out at the world with mirror-deep eyes. Meditation is a practice that aims to distance oneself from self-clinging. You stand back and just watch as thoughts come and go, as the world presences and withdraws.

It is like the crystal clarity of nature poetry.

Hinton, however, takes one more step by suggesting that because there is no stated subject in the ancient poem—no “I” in the sentences, it more easily allows the experience itself to show up…. show up by whom? To whom? Who is doing the seeing and noticing? What “I” or “we” is writing the poem? This is his wild earth=wild mind.

I know I have asked this question before— but reading Hinton I wonder: does it really mean anything significant when the subjects of the sentence are left off? Isn’t it just an unvoiced subject?

Haruki Murakami-translator Jay Rubin once wrote that all Japanese language books should have large warnings printed in red that state: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE TWILIGHT ZONE when the supposed “subject-less sentence is introduced.” He goes on to say that, “First of all, it is a lie. Japanese sentences always have a subject (and usually a topic) but they just are not voiced if the subject is understood.”

If you think about it, personal pronouns are pretty redundant anyway.

Leanne goes to the store. Leanne buys some rice and sees Sachiko at the store. Leanne and Sachiko walk home together.

In English when the subject is clear, we then make use of pronouns. Leanne goes to the store. She buys rice and sees Sachiko at the store. They walk home together.

But if you remove them, the sentence is basically still clear. Leanne goes to store. Buys rice and sees Sachiko at store. Together walk home.

It works.

You can understand the sentence with the subjects stated or not—with or without pronouns too.

So does it change anything leaving them unvoiced? Unlike in modern Chinese, in Japanese the subject is usually left unvoiced if the context is understood. But does that make a Japanese speaker more “zen-ish”?

It is like asking about how it changes one’s experience to think in a language with verbs coming at the end or a language with gendered grammar. Does it mean anything that cat is a male or female gendered noun? Or train station?

And what about writing? Writing systems that make use of ideographic scripts like Chinese are processed in the brain differently than that of phonographic writing systems like hiragana and the Roman alphabet… so men and women in Heian Japan might have seen the world very differently in their writing since women wrote in hiragana while educated men used Chinese characters. In this case, I feel it is more of a constraint to be made to write in one system over the other, as each system (ideographic versus phonographic) has its pros and cons.

In the Tale of Genji, much is made about calligraphy, poetry, and language.

Speaking personally, in switching back to an English-language mind, I have found myself much more overly focused on my feelings and wants. “I like” and “I want” are phrases I speak constantly. My instinct is that this is less about linguistic constraints and grammar as it is about cultural predilections. In Japan, people are more likely to talk about shared experiences, avoiding too much self- explaining.

I once read that unlike in other forms of Buddhism where emotion is rejected, being seen as an obstacle to enlightenment— in Japanese Buddhism, a person’s feelings are refined –or even transfigured—in positing them in the natural world. Grief and sadness, joy and love are after all emotions we all experience. So, in talking about the sadness of scattering blossoms or the loneliness of the long rains (like in Genji’s chapter two), we are really talking about shared emotion —but also if the shoe fits— obliquely that of our own.

Anyway, back to David Hinton, who believes that the less human-centric and self-centered we are in our thoughts and speech, the more the world will show up as enchanted for us. This is because experience will not be mediated by thought and ego. He writes:

To see with the mirror-deep clarity of the Cosmos seeing itself—that is to inhabit in immediate experience our original unborn nature, to give ourselves to this wild mystery and wonder. There, we are ourselves indistinguishable from mountains and egrets and pear blossoms, are therefore also scattering away through the Great Transformation. In this, we know our unborn belonging.

This was my least favorite of his books. But there was still much to think about in it.

My Goodreads review of David Hinton’s Wild Mind, Wild Earth

And my review of my favorite of his books, China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen” in the Asian Review of Books

Here is an interview Hinton did with Emergence Magazine