“I find it hard to believe you don’t know; The beauty you are; But if you don’t, let me be your eyes; A hand to your darkness so you won’t be afraid”
I’ll be your mirror. The Velvet Underground & Nico
“What is Zen? …. Only by stepping outside of logic so the theory goes, can one make the leap to enlightenment. But what is so bad about logic? Why does it prevent to leap to enlightenment? …
To answer that, one needs to understand something about what enlightenment is. 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. ….
At the core of dualism, according to Zen, are words – just plain words. The use of words is inherently dualistic, since each word represents quite obviously, a conceptual category. Therefore, a major part of Zen is the fight against the reliance on words.”
Douglas R. Hofstadter. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. A Metaphorical Fugue on Minds and Machines in the Spirit of Lewis Carroll. 1979.