Becoming a Disciple | The Meaning of Discipleship | Words to Express the Inexpressive

Words to Express the Inexpressive

Osho is considered to be the most prolific thinker of last century. He has spoken more words than anyone else and the fluidness of His thoughts were nowhere more visible than in his words. In this discourse, The Master talks about language and mother tongue. The United nations celebrate 21 st February has been marked as International Mother Language Day (UNESCO). 

BELOVED OSHO,
IN THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE, THE WORD FOR LOVE IS A PICTURE OF A PERSON WITH A FULL STOMACH, KNEELING, WITH BOTH HANDS RAISED IN OFFERING. THE PICTURE MEANS, "I AM SO FULL; PLEASE ALLOW ME TO SHARE, PLEASE TAKE FROM ME." OSHO, IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE LANGUAGES OF CULTURES THAT USE SYMBOLS ARE MORE PROTECTED FROM DEPRECIATION IN VALUE, AS HAPPENS FOR EXAMPLE IN ENGLISH WITH THE WORD `LOVE'?

The languages like Japanese or Chinese are certainly more protective of the essential quality of a word. But these languages are pictorial languages. The pictorial language is the language of the unconscious mind. That's why in the unconscious mind you see dreams.

The pictorial languages are also the languages of the child, who can only think in pictures, not by the alphabet. That's why in children's books you will see bigger, more colorful pictures. And as the child grows, pictures start becoming smaller, and finally the pictures disappear; only abstractions, alphabetical letters, take their place.

The alphabetical languages have some qualities; that's why they have won the race against the nonalphabetical languages. They are simple to learn.

Some languages have twenty-six letters; all words will be made out of these twenty-six letters. Sanskrit has the biggest number -- fifty-two letters. More are not possible, because you cannot make more sounds than fifty-two. So while in English many sounds are missing which are in existence -- there is only one `s' and in Sanskrit there are three -- Sanskrit is as perfect a language as it can be.

But Sanskrit also got defeated in the race of languages. It was very poetic like Arabic and other old languages, but you cannot do science in poetry, you cannot do mathematics in poetry. You need a more prose-like style of language. Poetry may be closer to emotions and subjectivity; prose is closer to facts and the objective world. And we are dealing with the objective world. Very few people are dealing with the subjective.

So languages that were leaning more towards the subjective, towards the poetic, got defeated, and languages that were pictorial were very difficult. Unless you are born Chinese or Japanese, it will take almost half of your life to learn the language. That is too much -- thirty years -- because you will have to remember so many pictures of all things... so many symbols. So although those languages have the innocence of child, a purity....

And they are not so corruptible, because for each different shade of meaning, they have different symbols. For example, love -- people love all kinds of things. People love their cars, people love their clothes, people love their food, people love their houses, people love their wives, their friends, their husbands -- one word has to be used for so many different things. It naturally loses its purity.

A thing cannot be loved in the same way that you love a person. And if you love both in the same way you don't know what love is. Love should be a definite quality. But the language does not offer many words -- only one word for everything. It is simpler, less complicated, more utilitarian, but you cannot save the purity of the word.

This Japanese symbol for love -- a man with a big belly, offering with both his hands -- can only be interpreted in one way; there are not two ways. It is simply saying that you are so full that you want to share. And that is the purity of love, when there is no desire to get but to give. And you can give only when you are overflowing, you can share only when you have too much -- out of abundance.
The picture makes it definite. But then you will have to learn millions of symbols for every small thing in the world. And it is too tedious, too tiresome; for each small thing you have to make a symbol. In Chinese, the symbol for fight or war is one roof, and under one roof, two women. It shows that if you have two wives, there is going to be a constant fight. So for all fights, this is the symbol.

In a way it is very solid. It has its own beauty and gives a definite meaning which cannot be easily corrupted; hence, you will not find in Chinese or Japanese any commentaries on scriptures. A commentary means you have to interpret.

In Sanskrit you will find thousands of commentaries on a single scripture, because Sanskrit is a subjective and emotional and poetic language, immensely capable of expressing any nuance of feelings, sentiment -- the whole spectrum. It has tried to be perfect, and it has almost attained perfection. But in attaining perfection it has lost something of humanness.

Each word has many meanings -- a dozen meanings -- because it has taken all sounds as letters. Now it wants no meaning in life or existence to be left without a name. Even with fifty-two letters you cannot exhaust the whole existence, so each word has a dozen meanings. It gives a very flexible beauty to it, because poets can play with words more easily when there are so many meanings. But it creates a new phenomenon: the commentary.

Krishna has spoken in the shrimad bhagavadgita, and there are thousands of commentaries. The same line can be interpreted in a thousand ways. Now it has become a jungle of commentaries; you don't know what Krishna really wanted to say.

It became such a phenomenon -- it has not happened anywhere else in the world -- that Shankara will write a commentary on Krishna, then Shankara's commentary itself becomes a question -- what does he mean? Then Shankara's disciples start writing commentaries on his commentary, and so on and so forth, generation after generation.

Krishna's gita is left far away. You will not find even the echo of it, because from one commentary to another commentary, they are changing their focus. The person who writes a commentary on Shankara is not concerned with Krishna, he is concerned with Shankara -- with giving a definite meaning to Shankara. And there are other disciples trying to do the same -- to compete with each other -- so there are hundreds of commentaries on Shankara. Then these people, on their own, will produce disciples who will be writing commentaries on their commentaries.

To go into Indian scriptures is really to enter into a wonderland. How people can go on playing with words, finding new meanings contradictory to each other! And there is no way to say who is right, because the language allows all the meanings.

Because of this flexibility Sanskrit cannot be a scientific language, although it has beauty. To chant it is almost like singing. It has flexibility, not monopoly. Everybody is free to manage the meaning, to derive a philosophy from it, which nobody else has ever tried to do before. So there is a freedom of thought, but there is bound to be confusion. Science cannot afford that.
The pictorial languages like Japanese are very systematic. They have a single-pointed meaning. 

No commentary is needed, the meaning is in the symbol. But you need so many symbols that such a big language cannot be used for the whole world as an international language, because if you are not born with it from childhood, it is going to take half of your life just to learn the language; the question of using it does not arise. Life is so short, people are in a hurry, death is so close, that it will be a sheer wastage of time -- thirty years or more just to memorize symbols.

All the languages of the world have something significant in them, but they also have problems.
Geeta's question is significant. It is true -- in English or in any language which uses an alphabet, no word can remain pure, because it will have to be used for many things. In different contexts it will get polluted, contaminated -- and people don't even recognize it. Somebody says, "I love you" in the same way that he says, "I love smoking." He does not see that loving to smoke and loving a person cannot be put in the same category; they can't have the same meaning. English is poor in that way.

In Sanskrit, if a brother and sister love each other, there is one word for it that excludes a sexual relationship automatically without saying anything. It is love, but not of the kind that exists between husband and wife. So for the husband and wife there is a different word. For your parents there is a different word, because the same words cannot be used. When you are using it for your parents, there must be something of gratitude in it, something of respect, reverence. And when you are using it for a thing, again, it cannot be from any other category; it will have its own category. It will be more like liking, not loving.

But then there are so many words that it becomes unmanageable, and with slight changes their meanings change. And every language has developed with a different background.
I have been thinking that there must be a language which can have all the beautiful qualities of all the languages without their problems, but it seems impossible. There have been efforts like Esperanto, but they don't take root; they are artificial, man-made.

It would be a great thing if the whole world had one language. It would help immensely to bring humanity closer to each other. It would be one of the greatest steps against war -- a basic groundwork for understanding -- because most of the conflicts are of misunderstanding, and language plays a great role in understanding or misunderstanding.

So there have been people who have tried to create an artificial language accepted by the whole world, but no effort has succeeded for the simple reason that the language you have learned since you were born has gone so deeply into your bones, into your blood, into your marrow, that it is almost a part of you. Something can be transplanted over it, but it will not be a joy. And why should one carry a burden?

The mother language goes so deeply into your being.... One of my professors, S.K. Saxena, who lived almost all his life in the West studying, then lecturing, being a professor, came back to India only in his old age. But he confessed to me, "It is strange, but I have to confess to you that I have lived almost all my life in the West, but still, if I fall in love with a woman, I want to talk in my mother tongue. To talk with her in a language which is not my mother tongue seems to be superficial."

Or in fighting you will forget the transplanted language. You would like to fight in your mother tongue.

There is a famous incident in the life of the famous emperor, Bhoj. He was well-known for respecting all kinds of talented people. His court was full of talented people. From all over the country, he had picked up the best -- the cream -- in every direction, in every dimension. He had the best scholars, the best philosophers, the best singers, the best poets.
One day a man appeared, and he challenged Bhoj: "You are too proud of your so-called scholars. I challenge your scholars to recognize my mother tongue. I speak thirty languages; I will speak in those thirty languages, and if anybody can recognize which one is my mother tongue, then there are one hundred thousand gold pieces for him. If he loses then he has to pay me the same amount -- and all are challenged."

The first day he spoke a few passages in one language, then in another, then in another. A few people tried and they lost. Just one man, a poet, Kalidas -- he is the Shakespeare of India -- remained silent, for the simple reason that the challenge was for the scholars, not for the poets. But he was watching the man very carefully. But after thirty languages -- and at least fifteen persons had already lost -- even Kalidas could not manage to find even a small way to distinguish which one was his mother tongue.
When all the scholars were finished -- nobody else was ready to take the challenge, seeing the fate of the fifteen most prominent scholars of the court -- Kalidas appealed to the man, "I could not participate today because you did not invite the poets. You invited only the scholars. It would be a great kindness if you can come tomorrow again and give a chance to the poets."
The man was more than happy. He said, "I can go on continuing as long as you want. Poets, singers, musicians, dancers, theologians, philosophers... anybody. I can go on coming every day."

The next day Kalidas was standing in front of the gate with the whole court and the emperor. He asked them to stand there to receive and welcome the guest. They said, "This is not necessary," but he said, "This is part of my strategy -- you just stand here."
There were at least a hundred marble steps leading to the palace, and as the man reached the upper step, Kalidas pushed him. He slipped on the steps, rolled down, and started shouting. Kalidas said, "This is your mother language!" -- and the man had to accept that this was his mother language.
"But," the man said, "this is not right."
Kalidas said, "There was no other way -- either love or fight. It is something that cannot be managed superficially."
I told the story to Dr. S.K. Saxena. He said, "The story is perfectly true; it is my experience. I have loved many women, but it was always superficial because I could not speak my mother tongue. I could not say how much I loved her. And to say it in a foreign language was simply a translation; it was not the original."
In the world there are thousands of languages, and nobody is willing to drop his own language. 

The only way seems to be that everybody be allowed to have two languages.
One is the international language -- and English is perfectly right for it. It is more contemporary than any other language. Every year eighteen hundred words are added to it. No other language has that. It goes on renewing itself continually with the times. It seems right now to be the only language which is still growing, and the future needs a continually growing language, growing in all directions so that it can be very comprehensive.

But it cannot fulfill the need for a mother tongue to everybody. So everybody should be taught two languages from childhood. Every person has to be bilingual. And the gap can be bridged if both languages are brought in from the very beginning. It is not that one first learns the mother language up to a certain age and then starts learning another language; then the other language is never going to have the rootedness which the mother language has.

Osho
The Transmission of the Lamp