The Nameless

I once lived alongside the banks of the I & M canal in a small town located in northern Illinois. At one time it linked Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and onward to the mighty Mississippi. Interested in its origins I read how the canal had been dug by hand with the toil of thousands of immigrants from all over the world. When completed, mules towed boats along the canal back and forth from big city to rural river. I used to walk those old mule trails traveling many miles there and back again.

Though the canal was dug nearly two centuries ago the water still remained in it, home to biting swarms of mosquitoes in the summer and ice skating children in the winter. The great iron locks still existed, rusted shut by a hundred years of disuse. Mounds of earth still lay where it was thrown shovel by shovelful.

Very few people know of the canal now. It has faded into disuse and with that comes forgetfulness. Though the canal helped make Chicago into one of the great cities of the world no one remembers those humble beginnings so long ago. It is the same with the mystery. While we are busy naming the world we neglect the nameless foundation of it all.

As I sit here in this theater I call my life I am swallowed up in this movie as it unfolds. I believe everything in it is real. When I wake in the night thirsty and with the need to get a drink of water should I stub my toe on a chair in the dark I know the chair is real even though I do not see it. The pain too is real though it soon fades.

My experiences are real. I know they are real because others verify the same experiences that I witness. A sudden spring thunderstorm sweeps over the land and people say: would you just listen to that thunder! Most everyone takes the sound of that thunder as something real.

They rarely stop to think that the sounds they hear are not the sounds of the world. They are representations of sounds that form in the brain. Our brains repeat what just happened like a movie flicking on a screen only the images are inside our brains and the movie screen is our eyes. We are all sitting in the same theater so we’ve learned to agree on what it is we see and smell, hear and taste, touch and know.

When I talk about my experience it is not the actual experience that I am describing. This may seem a given but in reality we for the most part mistake these representations of experience for the mystery that comprises actual experience. For instance, a scientist might measure the speed of a beam of light by assuming it to be independent of not only the scientist but also of the instruments that are doing the measuring.

Built into that assumption too is the notion that the beam of light is something the scientist is really seeing. If we examine this notion, however, we discover that the beam of light is a representation of light in the brain. What the scientist—or anyone—sees, hears, smells, feels, and tastes is always a representation of experience and not the experience itself. This is called the nature of things.

I blend my light with that of the sun and the moon. I endure though heaven and earth should pass away. Should everyone agree with me I am unaware of it. If they all disagree with me I am unconscious of them. Should the universe cease to exist I will abide alone. The best path to walk is the one where I lose none of the character with which I am endowed.

I look at the sufferings of the world with eyes full of dust. I am filled with sorrow as I watch others violently alter their true natures to greedily pursue wealth and fame. They presume righteousness and compassion are contrary to their nature as they ask one another why the world is full of pain. If they would but observe the regular constitution of the universe they would see what is bent is not made so by the curve, they would come to understand what is straight is not made so by the line, they would realize what is bound together is not held by string. These are all but representations, deceptions practiced upon the world.

The names I give to these representations of experience are temporal in nature existing only a short while before going back to the dust of infinity from which they once emerged, sprouted, and flourished. Before I name it there is no desire, only the mystery. Once I have given names to what I see all about me desire arises and the mystery vanishes. I begin to covet and that which I crave I desire all the more. Thus is the wheel of death put into motion.

When my senses bring something new to my attention I immediately set about naming it by comparing this new experience to my past remembrances. To name is the way of things. This is my desire. The mystery of the nameless has no desire. The world is full of things with names. The mystery is full of that which has no name. This is the way of the mystery.

That which comes before experience is the mystery: it has no name.

The representation of experience has a name: there is no mystery.

These two arise from the same source and differ only in name.

When I see the dark within the dark I witness the gate to all mystery.