Alien Terminology Distances Us From Raw Experience

Dukkha, Shunyata, Metta, Dzogchen, Sambhogakaya … all these sound so exotic.

Take ‘dukkha’; it means simply ‘suffering’. If we wonder what what ‘dukkha’ is, this removes us from the direct experience itself. We already have enough problems trying to identify our own suffering, let alone something called ‘dukkha’!

We subtly disassociate when we hear foreign terminology, but people do love to bandy it around. These are stock words that distance us. It is self-aggrandisement in order to sound authentic, but there’s a lack of caring whether others actually understand the words we’re using – it’s all about us and not them.

What am I really saying?
Repeating alien words can make us cold-hearted.

Nobody goes up to someone else and says,
“How are you? Are you dukkha today?” or “Are you full of metta today?”

🙂