Enlightenment--how language fools us

Many authors, Buddhist and otherwise, blame language for cutting us off from reality.  In almost any language, people speak in terms of subject and object:  "I went for a walk"; "I ran a mile"; "I talked to my friend".  By implication, "I" am separate and independent from the things and people I'm interacting with.  And I speak this way hundreds of times a day, every day, starting at the age of 3.  It's no wonder I start to take for granted the myth that I'm in my own world, that it's me and the rest of reality, and that I'm separate and independent.

Similarly, our language uses words to "stand for" things and people.  The words are always simpler than the things they represent.  But we confuse the word for the thing itself.  As the founder of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski famously said, we forget that "the map is not the territory" and "the word is not the thing".  We see the world through the filter of our words.  Korzybski, like Buddha, urged people to cultivate their awareness of this fact, awareness that what we see around us is largely our ideas about our reality, rather than reality itself.

Enlightenment is this:  to use words but to recognize their limitations.  To use words because they are convenient, but to recognize that "I" am not separate from the rest of reality, and that nothing is as simple as the word or name I use to describe it.  Use the words, but don't be fooled by them.  And, when time permits, quiet the mind, stop the words in meditation, and see reality as it is.