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"Usually, we are not required to hold more than one level of understanding of a situation in our minds at once. Moreover, the different descriptions a single system are usually so conceptually distant from each other that, as was mentioned earlier, there is no problem in maintaining them both; are just maintained in separate mental compartments. What is confusing though, is when a single system admits of two or more descriptions different levels which nevertheless resemble each other in some way. Then we find it hard to avoid mixing levels when we think about the system, and can easily get totally lost.

Undoubtedly this happens when we think about our psychology-for instance, when we try to understand people's motivations: for various actions. There are many levels in the human mental structure-certainly it is a system which we do not understand very well yet. But there are hundreds of rival theories which tell why people act the way they do, each theory based on some underlying assumptions about how far down in this set of levels various kinds of psychological "forces" are found. Since at this time we use pretty much the same kind of language for all mental levels, this makes for much level-mixing and most certainly hundreds of wrong theories. For instance, we talk of "drives"-for sex, for power, for fame, for love, etc., etc.-without knowing where these drives come from in the human mental structure.

Without belaboring the point, I simply wish to say that our confusion about who we are is certainly related to the fact that we consist of a large set of levels, and we use overlapping language to describe ourselves on all of those levels."

"The Buddhist allegory of "Indra's Net" tells of an endless net of threads throughout the universe, the horizontal threads running through space, the vertical ones through time. At every crossing of threads is an individual, and every individual is a crystal bead. The great light of "Absolute Being" illuminates and penetrates every crystal bead; moreover, every crystal bead reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net - but also every reflection of every reflection throughout the universe.

To my mind, this brings forth an image of renormalized particles: in every electron, there are virtual photons, positrons, neutrinos, muons ... ; in every photon, there are virtual electrons, protons, neutrons, pions ... ; in every pion, there are ...
But then another image rises: that of people, each one reflected in the minds of many others, who in turn are mirrored in yet others, and so on."

"Zen is holism, carried to its logical extreme. If holism claims that things can only be understood as wholes, not as sums of their parts, Zen goes one further, in maintaining that the world cannot be broken into parts at all. To divide the world into parts is to be deluded, and to miss enlightenment."

A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk. "
It is right before your eyes," said the master. "Why do I not see it for myself?"
"Because you are thinking of yourself."
"What about you: do you see it?"
"So long as you see double, saying `I don't', and `you do', and so on, your eyes are clouded," said the master.
"When there is neither 'I' nor 'You', can one see it?"
"When there is neither `I' nor `You', who is the one that wants to see it?"

"One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over. It might seem, then, that all efforts to explain Zen are complete wastes of time. But that is not the attitude of Zen masters and students. For instance, Zen koans are a central part of Zen study, verbal though they are. Koans are supposed to be "triggers" which, though they do not contain enough information in themselves to impart enlightenment, may possibly be sufficient to unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that lead to enlightenment. But in general, the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth."

"Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism. Now what is dualism? Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories. Is it possible to transcend this natural tendency? By prefixing the word "division" by the word "conceptual", I may have made it seem that this is an intellectual or conscious effort, and perhaps thereby given the impression that dualism could overcome simply by suppressing thought (as if to suppress thinking act were simple!). But the breaking of the world into categories takes place far below the upper strata of thought; in fact, dualism is just as a perceptual division of the world into categories as it is a conceptual division. In other words, human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon -which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least."

"At the core of dualism, according to Zen, are words - just plain words. The use of words is inherently dualistic, since each word represents, obviously, a conceptual category. Therefore, a major part of Zen is the fight against reliance on words. To combat the use of words, one of the devices is the kôan, where words are so deeply abused that one's mind is practically left reeling, if one takes the kôans seriously. Therefore perhaps wrong to say that the enemy of enlightenment is logic; rather dualistic, verbal thinking. In fact, it is even more basic than that: perception. As soon as you perceive an object, you draw a line between it and the rest of the world; you divide the world, artificially, into parts, and you thereby miss the Way."

"Here is a koan which demonstrates the struggle against words:

Kôan:

Shuzan held out his short staff and said: "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"

"Why is calling it a short staff opposing its reality? Probably because such a categorization gives the appearance of capturing reality, whereas the surface has not even been scratched by such a statement. It could be compared to saying "5 is a prime number". There is so much more-an infinity of facts-that has been omitted. On the other hand, not to call it a staff is, indeed, to ignore that particular fact, minuscule as it may be.

Thus words lead to some truth-some falsehood, perhaps, as well-but certainly not to all truth. Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system-no matter how powerful-cannot lead to all truths."