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Buddhism and the Philosophy of Language
The connection between thoughts, words and the world
I began reading about Buddhism when I was in my early 20s. I came to understand it as a religion that teaches that all events are interdependent, that pleasure and pain are inseparable, that concepts like good and bad require each other to make sense, and that every time we reach for a fixed truth it slips through our grasp. I came to see that a paradox therefore lies at the heart of all experience.
I think most of us can recognise this paradox in our daily sensations: a type of restlessness, a feeling that something isn’t quite right, a desire for calm and security combined with a feeling of being rushed or pressured.
My first readings were in the branch of Buddhism known as Zen. It was only later that I learnt the story of Prince Siddhārtha and his quest to end suffering through his transformation into the Enlightened One — Buddha.
I began to see how Buddhism and the problems of language in Western philosophy had a lot in common. Western philosophy has long been concerned with the nature of language and how it relates to the world, since it is through language that ideas are shared between people from generation to generation. It is also through language that the world and our place in it are somehow described.
