example, the word "dog" can mean dangerous creature to Person-1 and lovable
friend to Person-2. A dog runs toward P-1, who becomes terrified. The same
dog runs toward P-2, who is delighted. P-1's meaning of "dog" is the result
of a language-distorted picture -- as is P-2's quite different meaning. The
language usage involved enables us -and typically determines us -- to
generalize from one experience to all. Person-1 thinks of all dogs as bad
because early on she was once attacked by a dog. Person-2 expects all dogs
to behave pleasantly like a dog she has previously experienced.

Another unfortunate language usage involves believing as true -- that is,
as existing in Reality-1 -- what another person says is true -- a statement
existing in Reality-2. A contemporary example may be found in the abortion
controversy. Someone says that the fertilized egg in a woman's body is a
human being. This classification exists only in Reality-2, in the
classifier's mind. In Reality-1 the egg consists of a complex, changing
material process. The word "human" exists as a category or definition. The
egg itself exists "out there," in Reality-1. The category, the thought
labeled "human," exists only in human minds, in Reality-2. The actual egg
is living according to its dynamic DNA-determined destiny. The word "egg"
describes a static picture, an unchanging thing, a discrete meaning, or
symbol, stored away somewhere in a memory bit of neuronal association in
our brain. Two people who will agree on the existence of the egg will
differ violently on what to do about it because their meanings of the word
differ. Their different actions will be based on their different meanings
of the word. One person's "blob of protoplasm" is another person's "human
being."

We don't know everything about the egg -- nor about any other process in
the world, for our senses and nervous system (and such extensions of them
as microscopes and telescopes) have limitations. Our language, which
filters and distorts while we use it to describe, has its limitations,
also. When we use language in a life-degrading way, hurting ourselves and
our environments, we should examine our way of using language in perceiving
the world. We should realize that our language consists of symbols (words)
standing for other symbols (mental constructs) that in turn stand for
what's "out there." What's out there can never be known as it exists in its
entirety.

Now let us match this description with Suzuki's description of Zen
practice. "Naturalness" would refer to the body's cell activities as
directed by our DNA. Many of our activities, like eating and drinking
unhealthy foods, are directed by what our culture tells us to do. Our DNA
directives exist in Reality-1. Our culture's largely symbolic directives
exist in Reality-2. Suzuki, I believe, classifies the Reality-1 operations
as "natural," differentiating them from life-degrading culture-influenced
Reality-2 operations.

"Emptiness" would refer to the fact that we don't know exactly what is
going on in the Reality-1 world. All we know is what we know. What we know
consists of what we have experienced directly through our limited senses
and what people have told us, that is, somewhat language-distorted reports.
What we know is in the Reality-2 realm. What actually exists "out there" is
in the Reality-1 realm. The Reality-1 world is not the same as the
Reality-2 world. Filtered by hundreds of different languages and an
indefinitely greater number of meanings in people's heads, human pictures
can never be identical with Reality-1. Being other than our mental
pictures, Reality-1 must be empty of human meanings. In that sense,
"emptiness" most truly describes its existence, its actuality.

How about "nothingness"? If we cannot know precisely what is out there, our
descriptions and evaluations and judgments exist in our heads, in
Reality-2, not in Reality-1. The things that we see through our sensory and
language filters are not in Reality-1. Thus Reality-1 is the world of no
things. Suzuki said, "It is necessary to believe in nothingness." Let's put
a hyphen between "no" and "thingness," and then say "It is necessary to
believe in fluid no-thingness rather than in static thingness. As
Heraclitus said 2500 years ago, "Panta rhei," "Everything flows" -- in
Reality-1. The world of static things exists as a product of our
neurosensory symbolic transformations of Reality-1. Reality-1 exists --
energy, forming and unforming and reforming, moment by moment.

Once we accept these meanings of "Buddha nature," "naturalness,"
"emptiness," and "no-thingness," the light goes on. We are enlightened as
to the way we see and talk about as our DNA set us up originally to do. Our
steady awareness of how we make meanings will color all our interactions
with life. We will be better prepared to flow with what is happening, to
act creatively, and to hope that some life-enhancing force in Reality-1 may