The Finger That Points to the Moon…

The Fin­ger That Points to the Moon… — our inter­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tions are nei­ther real, nor nec­es­sar­i­ly accurate.

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Conclusion to a Zen saying — “The finger that points to the moon is not the moon”:

“Truth has noth­ing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a fin­ger. The fin­ger can point to the moon’s loca­tion. How­ev­er, the fin­ger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is nec­es­sary to gaze beyond the fin­ger, right?”

Ah, those Zen mas­ters. It’s clear that much of what they dis­cuss, usu­al­ly in response to a ques­tion – is the unre­al­i­ty of what we call real­i­ty. Or bet­ter put, the unre­al­i­ty of our descrip­tions, beliefs, and stories.

A more modern way of putting this is that reality is subjective.

If you think about it, pret­ty much all the con­flict in the world, now and for­ev­er, is a fight over whose pic­ture of “what­ev­er” is the cor­rect one. This is so no mat­ter how big or small the disagreement. 

It’s the basis for psy­chother­a­py — the client’s ver­sion of the sto­ry isn’t work­ing, so they head off to the wise ther­a­pist for a ver­sion cor­rec­tion. As if the ther­a­pist’s ver­sion is any more correct.

Wis­dom has a lot to do with let­ting go of sto­ries and per­cep­tions, and engag­ing direct­ly with “the moon.” This is engage­ment unvar­nished by long-wind­ed defens­es or expla­na­tions.

Yet, many are the peo­ple who will spend hours and hours argu­ing about the valid­i­ty of their per­cep­tions, despite the fact that the results they are get­ting from using those per­cep­tions clear­ly and plain­ly suck.

I describe this as “whacking yourself in the head with your own mallet.”

A sto­ry occurred to me: some years ago, a client pre­sent­ed the fol­low­ing: his daugh­ter was­n’t liv­ing her life the way he want­ed her to, and after the last fight, they hadn’t spo­ken for months. 

He list­ed off what she was doing that he did­n’t approve of, and said that no mat­ter how much he insist­ed, she kept doing them. 

I respond­ed, “All of the things you want your daugh­ter to do are per­fect­ly right. How­ev­er, they’re appro­pri­ate for a 14-year-old. Your daugh­ter is 31.” 

He got this odd look on his face for a moment, then said, “Well, that prob­a­bly isn’t going to work.” 

Here’s the fin­ger-point­ing part: when he pic­tured his daugh­ter in his mind, he saw a young woman per­pet­u­al­ly in trou­ble, and per­haps more sig­nif­i­cant, per­pet­u­al­ly 14. He was there­fore locked into “dad of a delin­quent 14-year-old mode.” His sub­se­quent behav­iour per­fect­ly fit that role. 

Thus, his “fin­ger-point­ing to the moon” was per­fect­ly accu­rate with­in its own con­text (in his head.) 

It just wasn’t pointing to anything other than itself. 

That’s real­ly the point of the expres­sion under con­sid­er­a­tion today. It’s like rais­ing your hand to (appar­ent­ly) cup the moon and believ­ing that you actu­al­ly hold the moon in your hand. 

We act as if the rep­re­sen­ta­tion we make in our minds, (about pret­ty much any­thing,) is the actu­al real­i­ty of the top­ic at “hand,” as opposed to our imag­ined representation. 

Have you ever sat in one of those busi­ness meet­ings where every­one is “try­ing to reach con­sen­sus?” So, be hon­est. Aren’t you sit­ting there, and inside, think­ing, “What the hell is the mat­ter with these peo­ple? Why don’t the get this? My fin­ger, point­ing, is just so obvi­ous­ly the same as the moon! And they dare to chal­lenge me with theirs?” 

We waste inor­di­nate amounts of time try­ing to get peo­ple to agree with our inter­nal representations. 

Every time I hear some­one say, “This is how it is,” I have a pret­ty good idea how it isn’t. If it were that way, there would be no need to explain it or try to con­vince anyone. 

That’s real­ly been the point of the prob­lems with the 2024 elec­tion in the States. (And of course, this is my fin­ger, point­ing…) Lit­tle Donald’s angry tweets, for exam­ple, are prov­ably “wrong” — have noth­ing to do with real­i­ty — and yet are agreed to by mil­lions. Not as facts, but as “I just feel it and believe it — and now I’m going to stuff it down your throat.” And this is the basis for how he’s run­ning a country.

It is simple arrogance that causes us to think that our opinion should be important to anyone other than ourselves.

One of the ways past this is to change our lan­guage.

Rather than declare my “fin­ger-point­ings” — my opin­ions — as being true, I sim­ply say, “Here is the sto­ry I am telling myself.” This acknowl­edges that every­thing I believe is an invention. 

Real­i­ty, on the oth­er hand (the moon) is “that with which I engage.” 

Real­i­ty is a 31-year-old daugh­ter sit­ting across from her dad, and dad drop­ping the rant, and sim­ply con­vers­ing. Not con­vinc­ing, conversing. 

As we explore our world-views with each oth­er, the dis­cus­sion ought not be about “right and wrong.” Our inter­per­son­al dis­agree­ments are sim­ply con­flict­ing opin­ions. Rather, our dis­cus­sion might turn to how we are going to “work” with each oth­er: “How is this work­ing for me, and how is yours work­ing for you?”

• If I am treat­ing my 31-year-old like a 14-year-old and she does­n’t like it and isn’t talk­ing to me, I can keep doing it in hopes that she sees the light and starts act­ing like a good 14-year-old, or I can ask myself how I like the results of my actions.
• If my goal is to dom­i­nate my daugh­ter and keep her under my thumb, I want to keep doing what I’m doing.
• If I want to set up an adult-to-adult rela­tion­ship with her, I’m going to have to change my behav­iour at the least, and I would be wise to change my inter­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of her from 14 to 31.

In the end, it’s that “sim­ple.”

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What are your inter­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tions? Can you own them as your per­son­al prop­er­ty — not some­thing to be “sold” but “sim­ply yours?”

Wis­dom and “truth” is about get­ting over try­ing to manip­u­late oth­ers into to doing it your way, while resist­ing being manip­u­lat­ed into doing it their way. From there, you can check how well your rep­re­sen­ta­tions are work­ing for you, and look for ways to change the inef­fec­tive ones.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tions are just that. The fin­ger that points to the moon is not the moon. Sim­ple, eh?

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