Houses of words

We build houses out of the words we believe so that we made hide inside them safe from the unknown, safe from the uncomfortable, safe from the threatening, safe from the questioning, safe from exposing our utter nakedness and want of coherence in the presence of a universe so vast that we cannot encompass it or comprehend it. “God” you utter and yet another brick is forced into place shielding you from all that you would keep outside. You offer me this brick and I have no idea what to do with it.

"if I had not the body, what great calamity could come to me?"

... 及吾無身 ，吾有何患？
(Tao Te Ching - 13)

It is an odd trick of language and of logic to separate the "mind" from the "body". It is the body that is alive, that feels, that experiences; the nervous system and the central nervous system are simply parts of the means by which it does so - and the "mind" is an "illusion" created by the functioning of those systems. Our intelligence and our meaning gymnastics should recognise their visceral roots - the body is indeed precious for that is what we are, a conscious, feeling, sentient body.

No body => no being. 

So, yes, "if I had not the body, what great calamity could come to me?" - or joy or anything, come to that!

Let life flow through you moment by moment, breath by breath, heart beat by heart beat.

Layers

We build our lives out of layer after layer of meaning, each piled chaotically one on top of the other, each weaving in and out of the rest, each binding us into place, each binding us into believing that those meanings are what we are, that those meanings are the sum and total of us - but they are not. They are only some of the possibilities of what we could be. They are only some of the paths we could walk. Even if we walked every pathway, even if we realised every possibility, they are still not what we are but only what we do, or could do, and, at the last, what we have done.

Words fall like raindrops

Words fall like raindrops on the surface of a pool, each making their disturbance for a while, making patterns of ripples that soon die away; patterns that are soon replaced by other patterns and overlaid by yet more, each supper-imposing, each cancelling out what was there before, each building in apparent complexity - but none of them , not one, is the pool.

Stop the words falling and, as it calms, the depths of the pool begin to be seen.

words

Word, constructs, ideas, ways of seeing, explanations, concepts, theories, discourses, scripts - piles and piles of words on words; each their own patterns weaving and painting; each persuasive to a point; each drawing you in to believe that they have caught some essence of reality; each valid within their own framework - like the patterns of a tapestry when on the loom: but the pictures that is trapped in there is no more the reality than than a child's drawing of the sun is the sun.

What use? Sometimes, like a workman's tools, they do a job, tightening this, loosening that, helping to unblock a blockage, mending a break: but if life is flowing freely, then they are of little use.

Good to fix things, but best seen through as a tissue: the word ''sugar'' will sweeten no tea, the word "fire" will burn no wood.

Distrusting words

You are right to distrust words, the warp and weft of their connotations are too persuasive.
Our minds flow along those far too easily, far too much without challenge, like a stream following a water course.