1.b Letting go of labeling

The labeling process is what most of us were taught in school. We studied hard to be able to define things correctly in order to get what we called “high grades.” Most educational institutions insisted on identifying everything, leading to a tag that distinguished us as graduates with knowledge of specific categories. Yet we know, without anyone telling us, that there is no title, degree, or distinguishing label that truly defines us. In the same way that water is not the word water—any more than it is agua, Wasser, or H2O—nothing in this universe is what it’s named. In spite of our endless categorizations, each animal, flower, mineral, and human can never truly be described. In the same way, the Tao tells us that “the name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

We must bask in the magnificence of what is seen and sensed, instead of always memorizing and categorizing.