Exploring Semantics in Religion and Society

We have a rather interesting subject this morning that combines religion and words. And, of course, the emphasis has been developing along the philosophy department relating to the use of words. And their place in the universal plan of things makes this perhaps an interesting occasion to combine the word problem with the religious problem. To begin with, we know that words, as Minshew in his Guide to Tongues, the first dictionary, tells us clearly that words do not describe the... purpose or reality of an object. A word does not explain an object or a thing or a circumstance. It merely sets forth a usage. The way a word is used becomes the basis of its semantic significance. Now, the way words are used today shouldn't happen to a dog. The words today are just playthings, but mostly they are also substitutes. for thinking and feeling and doing. The word, in other words, takes the place of a decisive action, thus relieving the individual of the possibilities of offending somebody or setting forth some truth that will be unpopular. Now, in one of the more later dictionaries, Noah Webster, we find the same thought. Webster warns us that we are not going to find in his dictionary the meaning of anything. We're going to find the use of terms to describe matters, and that these descriptions are not always valid, they're not always correct, they're not always meaningful. But by common habit, they have become universal. And somewhere along the lines, even the semanticist people come to the conclusion that the time has come to make words mean something. That when a word is used, it stands for a principle, it stands for a reality, it stands for a conviction or an opinion that is valid and sound. This becomes quite a problem because we've been using words for excuses for thousands of years. And we use them every day to escape work, to escape decisions, to substitute for thoughts, all kinds of uses. to reduce the stress and strain of facts. Now, a word, if it's not factual, it has very little permanent significance. But facts are hard things, and facts are problems that people do not like to face. Therefore, it is simpler to say something that is comparatively meaningless and useless rather than to face into an act which might be significant and of permanent value. One of the ways we can study this type of situation is to realize how these word problems have come to grow with us. And that also they were a problem in antiquity. It is said that somebody held up a carrot to Socrates. And Socrates took the carrot. He says, what is it? The man says, this is... A carrot. Socrates, and what is a carrot? Well, a carrot is a vegetable. Can you show me a true vegetable? Yes, I have the carrot. Socrates said, now I know everything and nothing. Now this is the type of way we... We use these terms, probably a little more effectively, a little more cleverly, but essentially this way. We use words for substitutes, for thoughts, for feelings, and for actions. And the result is that they become excuses for the perpetuation of ignorance. Now, this seems difficult to believe because words are very glamorous things. We make beautiful poetry over them. We make great speeches upon them. We do all kinds of things and we name legal holidays for them. So we take a legal holiday which might have to do with a very important... We have an important invention or advent in the life of our country and we declare it a legal holiday. Which means it is a day for rejoicing, for consideration and for appreciation of the principle involved. What do we do? We put on a football game, which has nothing to do with anything. And if we should cancel the football, it would probably be an act go to Congress. Because we must keep those things going. But nobody cares really much. about what the original idea was. Half a day holiday, or a day's holiday, is the important thing. The principles involved behind words are misused all the time. I think, where's the years ago, there was in the New Yorker, a rather cute cartoon dealing with this subject. Two prehistoric men were cutting an inscription on the wall of a Cro-Magnon cave. They had a stone and a piece of metal and they were making things, pictures, to tell a story. And one of them turned to the other and said, I say, how do you spell dinosaur? With three legs or four legs? This is about the spirit of it. Now, as we go along, let's try to see what happens. Take Christmas, for example. Now, there's no one in the world that objects to the fact that Christmas is one of the great holidays of Christianity and one of the great religious days of the world. It is perfectly proper to celebrate it. It is perfectly proper to share in rejoicing. All these things are proper. But it is also proper that this day should mean something to the life of the person. It is not simply a day to send gifts. It is not a day to take the kids to the store to see Santa Claus. There is something more to it than this. There is a great significance behind it. And we have buried the significance in a term which has gradually come to mean something else. So the word for Christmas, which really means the Mass of Christ, has gradually become a day of exchanging of gifts. celebrating all kinds of secular things, and if you're lucky, either a ball game or a golf tournament. These things are not, the semantics of these things are not good. Now, we use these semantics also in personal evasion. We use words in our relations with our neighbors, with our family, and even sometimes in talking to ourselves. We are trying to escape the hard... facts of reality, and by covering them in an elaborate layer of holidays or platitudes, we think we have solved something. Now, our world at the moment is in a serious condition, very largely due to the fact that we never face on or into a fact. Facts are dangerous. They might force us to improve our dispositions. That would be very difficult. They might make us more truthful, almost unthinkable. We would be more generous, a good virtue, but expensive. All the time we use these words to take the place of something real. And the words themselves, as Minshew points out, are not really anything at all. Their meanings are not the same. Not long ago in our life, a hood was the front of an automobile. Today it is headgear. We have to think of many, many things of this nature. All words change with the customs of the time. They change with the dominant class of a group. They are influenced by education, by scientific discoveries and so forth. And speaking of scientific discoveries, we must realize that words are not necessarily answers or solutions. They are merely terms given to things for which we have little or no actual understanding. So everywhere we conceal ignorance with long terms that seem important and valuable, but they are not the answers to anything. Now when we get further into this semantic problem, we come to the conclusion, as one expert, I think it was Kajipsky, who makes the statement, that probably the answer to the semantic problem is to keep quiet. The only way to get away from a misstatement is to say nothing. Almost anything you say will be misunderstood by somebody else, and as we look into politics, we will realize that we're in the midst of the greatest mass of this type of problem in the world. The semantics of government are incredibly bad, because they have nothing to do with facts, and yet they are built up to resemble facts, but the facts remain untrue. And the realities of the matter are not discussed. There's hardly a paper that comes into print today in which we admit, frankly, that we are trying to conceal something, misinterpret something, or find a virtue in something we know is not very good. All these things cause the average person to sit back and believe that we live in a highly intellectual era. We are pretty smart people. We are smart enough to deceive ourselves and each other, but not smart enough to think straight. This is one of the excuses for the rise of semantics, as a means of clarifying and washing words, so they will no longer have meanings that are inconsistent with truth. So we can look along a little bit now, and we come to one of the great days of the year, Easter. Easter is a day that has very deep significance. And for more than about three and a half billion Christians, Easter is a sacred day. Of that three and a half billion who admitted to a sacred day, how many of that group is actually doing anything except celebrating? They will have masses. They will have processions. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre will be overflowing with humanity. There will be masses at the Vatican. There will be all kinds of church services, which are quite proper and right and very valuable. But after the day blows by, what has happened to public morals? Are we doing anything except celebrating? Are we doing anything except talking? Or are we doing anything except perhaps going to church for an hour? Where is the meaning of this striking into the life of the individual? How do we as persons participate in the mystery that this event signifies? Now this is not the only event that so signifies. The journey of Muhammad to Mecca or to Jerusalem on the Arizat. That is very important. to them. The exams of the elevation of Nirvana of the Buddha were important to those people. Every great religious ceremony is important to someone. We have religious ceremonies in every nation of the world. We have it profoundly distributed through all of Europe and the Western Hemisphere and many parts of Near East. And yet, this is the area. For the great wars are being fought today. We have the ceremony on the proper day, we rejoice, and the war begins the following day. This isn't the one thing that happened in World War I that became quite a scandal. That day the wars were not quite as well and tightly set as they are now. In the trenches in Europe, on Christmas Eve, they suspended the war. And both sides celebrated together. And the war continued the next day. Now this is kind of something that we ought to think about. Look through politics. Look through economics. Look through education. And see what effects these important events have upon the life of the individual. We have no reason to need any form of ethics that is not available. This is here, but instead of ethics, we phone somebody and wish them well. Now it's perfectly right to wish them well. I think some little ceremony, particularly to lonely, tired people, is very gracious and very beautiful. There's no reason why we should not continue to make all efforts to bring peace, happiness, and remembrance into the lives of those we care for. But there is more to it. There is something that should change us. They should do something to jealousy. It should do something to cruelty. We're able to change neglect of the old and the young into something better. All these occasions are therefore spiritual opportunities, occasions in which we may be a little better than normal. And now everybody is worried, and we are all worried a little bit, about the high price of greeting cards. Funny these days, we'd be paying $5 for an Easter card at present rates. Well? If it is a hard thing to do, and we can hardly afford it, and somebody we know will really be helped by it, be it. But not make a habit of buying it, and then having your friends or neighbors sign it, and forget all about it. There is no reason why every word should not be backed by an integrity. When we say, I care for you, we should mean it. It should not be whispered twice a year and forgotten the rest of the time. There is this problem of the use of words. Now we have come to the point where words become a substitute for action. The words we use today cover the whole period of what we should think, what we should believe, and what we should do. We consider these words as substitutes for sacrifice, for thoughtfulness, for honor. and for good nature. And the result is, we haven't very much of any of these characteristics. Because you cannot buy the understanding and integrity without something more than a word. It needs to have to have an action. It needs to have a reality behind it, which is going to carry through from one generation to another. I've known a number of people in retirement homes who once a year or twice a year, sometimes a little oftener, receive a card from some relative, wishing them well and hoping that they're happy. This is not the real answer to this situation. The Christmas card, the semantic answer, is not the answer. Somewhere the answer lies in action. The thing that the words... semantically speaking, cannot provide is a changing action, something that becomes a valid force in a direction indicated. If an individual is having an argument with a friend and decides to send them a card and hope it'll take care of it, this is a very small, insignificant action to take care of perhaps a very deep and lasting hurt. It is not necessarily sufficient to say, I'm sorry, and send it with a stamp on it. It might help. But wherever there is a misunderstanding, there is the blessed privilege of correcting it, of making it real. If people haven't spoken to each other for months or years, this is the time not to keep on sending cards, but to settle down in the spirit of integrity and solve the problem. This is something we seemingly don't see much anymore. And for lack of it, we see a whole generation going along on a surface, a surface so thin that it's going to break through at any moment. We see young people going out, doing things that are contrary to every fragment of integrity. We find the churches have a large attendance, but very small change in the living conditions. and living convictions of people. It is not enough to go to church, or to do any of these things, or to mouth religious words. It is not enough to memorize the Ten Commandments. It is not enough to tell all your friends about the Sermon on the Mount. The thing is to practice, to show it, to indicate in daily life that we are believers, that we believe in something. Now many people do not believe in theology, but most of those who do not believe in that still believe in integrities of some kind. Let these integrities be therefore the symbols of our beliefs, the symbols of our remembrances, the symbols of the fact that we are going along side by side on a narrow road, and that one of these days we are going to leave the road anyway. In the meantime, let's be pleasant with those on the road with us. and try to get something that will make it understandable. Now, Kawakawa, in his studies on semantics, brings up a number of interesting points regarding the importance of semantics. The use of words. The first of all probably is that a word has no set meaning. A word does not have a meaning that is inflexible because it is not in itself a thing. A word is a device. It is something that has a momentary significance. When world changes come, the word changes. And even the definition of a word changes. And words that meant something in one century means something else in another. The word is merely an exchanging instrument to pass an idea from one person to another. And if this idea is valid, it can be useful. If it is invalid, this is merely a waste of time. Now we are suffering at the moment from a mass of invalid terms. Terms that have no basic... Vital meaning. One of these terms is honesty. Now, honesty does have some meaning for some people, but what? An individual who would never under any condition steal from you, in which they now regard himself as honest, will scandalize a neighbor, which is dishonest, and be perfectly convinced of it. He will find ways to do things to impose upon a friendship. He will do all kinds of tricks to accomplish something for himself under the name of friendship. And yet friendship is a nice word. Sincerely used, it is a good word. Used as it is today, it is merely a convenient term by which we win the respect of people and then exploit it. Most of our advertising is of this type. Advertising is not basically honest. It is dishonest in some way, but the dishonesty is carefully concealed under a false face, namely the apparent design to be of service to you. The answer is, the real reason is for them to be of service to themselves. So we have all kinds of dishonesty in advertising, which we cannot actually do much about, because the terms are so used. that they can be interpreted variously, legally or non-legally. But here we have a world of people, most of which, as a world, believes in some form of honesty or integrity. And we're living in a society in which honesty is one of the rarest things on earth. These things tell us that little by little, we are changing the meanings of words to fit the changes in our own integrities. And for the most part the changes are a lowering of the standards. Actually we use words of integrity that were really honorable 20 years ago. We use those same today, they are excuses for various kinds of chicanery. So here we have education. Though we always have loathed to believe that formal educators have no idea whatsoever that they are graduating potential narcotics addicts. Are they not aware of the fact that education is influenced by economic considerations almost solely? Are they unaware of the fact that they are educating individuals to be pawns in a mechanism? They know this, but they shout to the joy of the benefits of education. And at the same time, we are in trouble. The suicide rate is up. The narcotic rate is hovering on up. All kinds of minor varieties of chicanery are in form. Drunk driving is still a menace. These things do not change. Education has never even intimated that it was primarily concerned with producing an honest person. It is intended to produce a skillful person in some respects. Now if we change this semantic term from what we call skillful to honorable, so that we might say the individual will graduate as a human being with an integrity, half of the population would rise in righteous wrath. When it was attempted in the school board in Los Angeles, the board got up and practically had a riot. Mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts. shouted as loud as they could that they didn't want their children to be educated, to be honest. If they did, they'd remain poor. So, semantically, education has become a synonymous of success economically, rather than success ethically. And very, very definite efforts are made to lower all of the restraints which might indicate control. ethical situations. The latest reviews and patterns connection with television indicate that within the next 10 years it is expected that practically all stations will be featuring hard pornography. Why? Because that's what somebody wants to watch. Now the problem is also another. They will blame the public and the public will be partly to blame. Because the public will be glad to pay for pornography, but is very hesitant to pay for Bach and Beethoven. We want the thing that will take us through this doldrum with excitement, not with virtue. So we have all these things to think of. We have progress as a term, semantically. But what is progress? Progress to the average individual is not improvement. It is wealth or accumulation or a state of dignity. All around it is the same thing. All these words that we used to love and they used to stand for such beautiful things are now simply covers for the propagation of selfishness and of general corruption. So the semanticist comes along and says it's high time to do something about this. It is high time to realize that we are kidding ourselves. That all these slogans of nobility with which we are surrounded are empty words. The semantic power of them is lost. They do not stand for progress anymore. They stand for a smug contentment in which the mind is perfectly willing to overlook integrities in order to keep friendships or keep business customers or to keep busy in one way or another. We have it in music. We have it in art. We have it in everything. Years ago, I was able, in an auction sale here in Los Angeles, to secure a series, not I couldn't afford them all, but a series of Tibetan chankas, or paintings, of the life of Buddha. So I secured the painting for the nativity, and the painting for him ascending to the nishkutushita heaven to preach the doctrine to his mother. And we had three of them. And I found out why they wanted to sell these magnificent things. Beautiful. And they told me they hoped to get enough money by selling them to get a Picasso. And when they got it, didn't know what they had. Now this doesn't mean that Picasso couldn't paint. It doesn't mean that Salvador Dali doesn't paint. It means that they all found out that they had to find a new definition, a new way of using the word art. They had to get a new semantic meaning for art. Art became something to be merchandised. If it sold well, it was art. If it did not sell well, it wasn't art. And anything that sold well wasn't art to start with. So we have these types of things, the same way in dieting, the same way in all kinds of self-improvement fields and so forth. Everything is to do something incidental, something that isn't real, not to get into the very substance of things. Now we have a great movement in religion today. We have a great movement of people towards a... New concept of religion. So what would we say semantically of the word faith? What is faith? And the semantic term is very simple. Something which is a belief is another source of strength. Something that has to do with building security of some kind in the person. Well, we look around to find out. what faith is. And we find that today large parts of faith are invested in the big picture. Opinions, beliefs, faiths, doctrines that have no foundation in a security of any kind. We find that faith is simply, for the most part, the willingness of an ignorant person to accept the beliefs and doctrines of another ignorant person. It is the fact that the blind leads the blind. And when the time comes to make a solid stand, some individuals will say, well... if I'm not to believe this type of thing, what should I believe? And if you suggest the Sermon on the Mount, they will look at you kind of cross-eyed. The idea of things that 2,000 years old is just too old now. We've got to have something better, something up to today. We can't go on the basis of love thy neighbor or something of this nature. We've got to go rather on the idea that our neighbor is open to our exploitation at any time. So all the words that we use have a tendency to get into bad trouble. We do not know how to say honesty, integrity, virtue. What is virtue? Virtue, it would seem, is a moral asset. Virtue is a condition of character which prevents an individual from performing an unhappy, unfortunate, or unrealistic action. Virtue is, after all, A life according to the laws of life, according to the realities of nature, according to the experiences even of science. Virtue is to keep the rules. We interpret it entirely differently. We don't think of people as being virtuous anymore. We think of them being smart or stupid. The problem of virtue doesn't even come in. So we go along and we buy products and we read the ads. They're good for everything. There's nothing that they won't take care of. Then we find out that they have heavily loaded with all kinds of dopes and preservatives and insecticides and everything you can think of. We are supposed to overlook that. We are also supposed to assume that all these chemicals are perfectly healthy, which they are not. And if we doubt it and think the product should not be on the market, then the manufacturer... We're going to a conniption fit. We are interfering with his inalienable right to do as he pleases. So sub-semantics gets against the hard time. And we come back now probably to our most important consideration, and that is its religious values. We are in great need today for a recognition of religion that escapes the narrow boundaries of creedal limitations and... ...credal superstitions. Now, it's hard to believe that a religion could be superstitious. It isn't, in substance, but most of its members are susceptible of superstition. They may not believe it, they may not realize it, but more nearly all religions are loaded with people who claim to believe and then act completely outside of what they claim. We have probably over... Two million churchgoers in the United States who are completely dedicated to their churches. We have another 10 or 15 million who are moderately dedicated. And yet, in spite of the fact that over half of the American people go to church at least occasionally, and many regularly, our crime rate is going up every year. Why? Because somewhere along the line, the people who claim to believe have found ways to support the claim without improving character. They take it for granted now that these mistakes they're making are inevitable, that they're really perfectly honest if they decide that dishonesty is necessary. So we take all kinds of political liberties, we lose values, we fail to introduce integrity in children. And so little by little, semantically speaking, the good words are gradually being turned into bad words. Government is now being turned into politics. Statesmanship and those type of things are now changed into office holdings. We find also that big corporations are no longer monuments in the society. Somebody has bought 51% of them. Everything is sacrificed, and to ever discuss it, to mention To point out it is to perform a great sorrow to civilization. It is terrible to take away from people the belief that they can do wrong and be right. So we have to find ways of doing this. And I think the simplest way of doing it is the semantic way. Talk less and do more. Do not frustrate words by constant misuse of them. Try to find out what you can do about anything for which you would normally phrase only a statement. I think we have to come down to final realization that we've got to stop using words as excuses for conduct. We've got to get out of the idea that a word can be so twisted as to condone false or vices. We've reached the point now, I notice, in the reason... recent journals, where various actions which not long ago we considered very bad are now perfectly commendable. It is no longer necessary to worry about things that were moral issues. It's not necessary anymore to worry about how to take care of children. Let them grow. The idea that they might need integrity is an infliction. It places a responsibility upon parents. We're much more interested in escaping responsibility. So the loss of interest and responsibility is gradually transforming this into a virtue. And everybody who maybe gets rid of the responsibilities is regarded as fortunate or enjoying heavenly favor. But in reality, they're making only trouble to themselves and each other. So semantics comes along and tries to help us to clean words. Now we know we can't make permanent cleaning. Semantics is not going to tell us that it's going to give us the ultimate meaning of words. We can't do it. Because there are no ultimate meanings in a world of constant change. But it's going to try and give us a world of improvement in change. The changement is going to make things better. And that improvement is going to mean that character will improve, not simply disintegrate. Now we take the penalty off of a crime, but it still remains a sin. We find ways of exonerating the individual for his mistakes because we like to make the same ones. Therefore, if everybody wants to make the same mistake, this action becomes a virtue. It's very difficult because we have an enormous language and it is getting bigger every day. And the words that are used less and less. are the words on the high cultural levels. We have less and less of integrities and more and more compromises. So how can we get around it? Well, one thing is to use only meaningful words. Well, we know a word is in bad trouble. We don't have to use it. We don't have to use words and leave them hanging without meaning. When we speak of faith, we have to put something with it. Faith in what? Faith of what? Faith is a belief, but we've got to enlarge it. Faith must be enlarged to mean the practice of a belief. The belief isn't enough. Faith means that the individual is obeying that belief, living in harmony with it, and dedicating life to its preservation. If he was looking for another word, if he wants the word truth, he must try to find out what truth is. truth is. And if he finds out even a little truth, he has to do something about it. Now, truth is very difficult because it changes with every generation. Things which a few years ago were truthful are no longer. And things that were not long ago untruthful have now become truth by usage. But to the person who is thoughtful, the truth must always be the best available meaning. We can't know what exists and how long it will be that way. But when we say that truth, we mean the supremeness of our present knowledge of a fact. A proof of truth becomes a reality for that day, for that year, for that generation. We may expect it to grow. Truth must always increase because we must always grow. But truth must never go backwards. It must never mean a belief in less or lower. It must be always forward to something better and something reality. Now, what use is a truth? What use is it to believe something noble and beautiful? Well, it inspires, it makes us a little happier, but unless this truth builds itself into our character and becomes a part of our basic integrities, it does us very little good. We have two kinds of truth, therefore. The kind that we use every day and the kind that we must face when we leave this world. The truth we take with us today is totally neglected. It is only the truth of what we can do while we're here. There is no estimation of values beyond the present standard of integrities. I love speaking. A philosopher, a politician said not long ago, there will be no end to wars. Wars are inevitable. And they're inevitable why? They're not inevitable at all. Semantically, they're completely possible of solution. Inevitable means only one thing. They will not change unless believing changes. Wars end when people... have no longer any faith in the war, or perhaps more practically, have no profit to derive from it. Nearly all wars are wars of profit. It used to be that it was wars largely of believings. It was the religion of one group set against another. Then the war was a struggle to gain domination of the minds and hearts of other people. This factor is now come back. completely negligible. The problem today is to dominate and enslave and control a people politically, socially, and economically. And while this point of view exists, there is no truth, because truth does not permit any of those things. It's entirely more a noble and a proper way of life. So here we are on a wonderful day. We are on the day that celebrates The resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. We have all thought of this. For it would be too many people, it means if he rose, he took with him the mystery of death, and we all rise together. In his death and resurrection, we have the bond between the eternal and the temporal. We have a hope that we will also rise from the darkness. of material existence. Now this thought can be extended. It can be beautifully extended. This symbol recognizes or perhaps summarizes the idea of the victory of truth over life and truth over death. In other words death is one of these things that is so inevitable that semantically we can't do anything with it. We can do various ways of trying to prevent it or trying to hasten it, but the interpretation of it semantically is very difficult. Therefore, the only salvation we have from the term is to recognize the miracle of the resurrection. The resurrection is, of course, not limited to a person, not even limited to the Godhead. A resurrection is an improvement in the inner resources of an individual. A resurrection is a release of internal virtue. It is the ascent of the person into a higher condition, whereby in bringing with it a larger world and a greater participation in the eternity in which we exist. Therefore, this season and this time particularly, we have an idea of the power that lives and dies and is resurrected in the service of mankind. We have, therefore, a belief that there is something beyond this life. And the moment we believe this, we break faith or break contact with materialism. Now, semantically, materialism is a bad word anyway, because no matter what you say with it, you're not sure of anything. Materialism is the assumption that there is nothing beyond this life. This assumption is... Not true-bable. The difficulty with it is the same as with every use of a term that should be approached semantically, but is approached literally. In semantics, we might say that resurrection is a symbol word, a word which carries with it upward change and an unfoldment. The bud is resurrected as the flower. And the flower is resurrected in the seed. Resurrection is the release of a moreness, a greaterness, from within that which is less than itself, apparently. So actually, immortality is the right of every human being to grow. It is the right of the individual who has an enemy to get over it. It is the right of an individual whose morals are poor to improve his character. It is not only enough for him to prevent breaking laws, which are the laws of the state, but for breaking sins, which are the laws of the soul. We therefore find that from the beginning, all beliefs, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Brahmin, Confucian, Taoist, all beliefs have one belief in common, and that is that it all means something. That there is something that is hope, there is something that is growth, there is something that is reality, there is something that is integrity in these doctrines. And against that is a rather cold, icy statement that we can't prove it, that we can't actually prove that these things are true. Yet we can prove it in a way. We prove it every year. With the death and resurrection of plants, we both prove it all the time. With the rise and fall and rise again of faith within ourselves, we find our own lives changing. And sometimes beautiful things happen when we think we've come to the end. There's always hope. St. Paul lists hope as one of the great hopes for mankind. Life, love, hope. These are the great hopes. beliefs, for which there can be no substitute. So we can take a word like love and approach that sartically. And we can find every kind of love you can think of, from the individual who loves a hand at poker, to the individual who wants to change the course of religious history. We can have all kinds of love. Love of family, love of beauty, love of children, love of God, love of nature. All these things are part of love, and it is the duty of our inner life to allow this love to grow. Now, when it grows up, it does not discard what it loved before. It picks it up and carries it into a higher level. The artist who painted very marioca things, when not very good, gets enlightenment. He keeps on painting, but all of a sudden a new quality comes into his art. And this is particularly noticeable in Oriental art, and especially in the paintings of Sesshu. Sesshu was a Zen master, and he ascended to all the levels of the Zen teaching. And a Zen master going into an art gallery and looking at the paintings of Sesshu will say, Ah! This painting, he had achieved the third level of enlightenment. That painting, he was in the fourth degree. This painting, in the fifth degree. But this little sketch here goes back to the first degree. But gradually, through his art, you can discover the development of his own life. Until finally, in the great scroll of Sesshu, he achieves the fullness. For he attains in this picture the full expression of the reality of existence. These things are all told in the things that he does. Now this would be semantics. Sessler's Great Scroll is a masterpiece of semantics and is so prejudiced as one of the most valuable paintings in the world. But this is part of a growth upwards through various degrees. We can start in by being a family cook and end by being... cooks of eternity. We can do all kinds of common things and because of the integrity to ourselves, these common things become uncommon. They become tremendously valuable and they show a release of integrity. So we can say that the family was not getting along well, suddenly gets better. And suddenly better things happen. And we say it's growth. And we send another family that was getting along fairly well, and now it's all in dope and narcotics. That family is deteriorating. These things are all part of a great scale. And the purpose of semantics is to make codes and qualities of life consistent with the meaning of words. So that when we say a certain word, we mean a positive contribution to progress. When we say what essential kindness is, it must be because we are essentially kind. And that this kindness is not simply in our word, but in our practice. For kindness in a word is very flimsy, therefore very poor semantically. But when this word is transmuted into a way of life that continues year after year, to this world and beyond, then we are kind. So all around we are using so many beautiful words, and using them so badly, that we are gradually lowering the thresholds of our integrities. We believe that these words do mean what we think they mean. When in reality, words mean only what the inner consciousness of the person using the word has achieved. If we are inwardly awakened, the word definition is improved. If we continue to go along as we were, or even descend into a lower stratum of action, then the word does not mean anything. It is just simply a cover for a term. Now in our work with people in prisons and in our work in various reform agencies, we find constantly the bitter struggle to retain the status quo. The individual doesn't really want to change. The idea of becoming better to him means only one thing. It means that the pickpocket has got to give up picking pockets, which is his way of life. and his source of income. Therefore, he will not vote for the laws that abolish pickpockets. And yet it is perfectly probable that in time that law will have to change, or the exoneration will have to change, and people will no longer be entitled to feel sorry for him because he has to pickpockets to live. They will be glad for him when he finds a better way to make a life. All of these things change the meanings of words. They change their uses. They change their philosophies. We find them in medicine. We find them in art, music. We have a tremendous quality of now of popular music. Most of it is pretty bad, but it is popular and it makes money. And because it is successful financially, we will have it on television world without end. The individual who has to listen to it is going to get sick, and this sickness is going to gradually corrupt him until he believes it also. Wherever the person comes into the presence for the first time of something that to him is wrong, and he knows it, he should not give it a second look. He shouldn't gradually permit himself to be eroded away or convinced by people who do not know either. So we get all these kinds of things and we come finally to our Easter party. Here we know a spiritual mystery. We know that essentially all the religions of the world have this one thing in common. If we have the understanding, we will find that the 72 names of God will always be there. In our large book, there is a plate. showing the 72 names, by the way. 72 names for one God. This is a story. Each of these names is a semantic term arising from the experience of a people. It replies to some who gain great culture and to others who are still in primitive conditions. It replies to those who survive persecution for the sake of truth. And it applies to those who tried and failed. It becomes a part of the process. The life of every living creature is in some mysterious way the most primitive person in the jungles of Africa or in the eastern East Indies. All have some semantic reality. And this fact is probably our greatest safety. If we accept as semantically and honestly is right. We can go on then without waiting much for honesty to pass through all these multitudinous stages. It gradually becomes evident, as it did for the last million years, that those things which are the virtues of life have survived and will survive, and those things which are the vices of life perish. and nations perish with them. There is no need to ask for final proof of integrity. It is in every page of history. It is in every experience of private citizens. There are realities that are above semantic question. One of those realities is truth, which must inevitably survive. Yet there will be all kinds of definitions of truth. Truth may be regarded as the definition of truth. definite effort to get a witness to tell the truth in a court of law. I probably won't anyway. But the truth in principle is that all things shall be measured by their intents, by their realities, their virtues, and their meanings. And truth, therefore, becomes a symbol of honesty, virtue, integrity, patience, kindness, peace, love. Self-sacrifice, service, all these things are parts of truth. Therefore, they can be fitted into the semantic picture. They will change in detail with each generation. But in no generation will peace fail if it is used. And in no generation will honor fail if it is actually applied. The reason these things have never succeeded so well Because no people, or very few people, have made the tremendous sacrifice necessary to prove them. So we are down in the 20th century, moving in toward the 21st century. We bring with us several great holidays, of two of the two most important in our religion, being Christmas and Easter. These become symbols of the things that we all believe, and should believe. First, the truth. is born into this world for the salvation of mankind. And that this truth is very simple. Love one another. Keep the peace. Be honest. Share equally. And put the common good above all individual ambition and aspiration. This will mean something that will go on to the end of time and never change. We will believe this as long as we exist. This is a solid term. So we might as well start now. So instead of just simply sending that Easter card, which is a kindness, no one should deny that it comes from the heart. It is something. But with it, let us see if we cannot transform some part of our life to match the card. If it is something in which we should learn to be kind, or to be generous, or to understand each other. Let these things grow with the card, and where it may be a descent to a stranger whom we have not known for a long time, let it be accompanied by a letter or a note asking more about that person, the ways in which we can get together again, the achievements that have made life better, and if there have been sorrows, that we should share them together. Semantically speaking, there has to be a real meaning for these. Rather than simply a physical expenditure of two bits on a 25 cent stamp. All the good things are there, but we only take the surface of them. Twice a year maybe we send a card, the rest of the year we never even speak to each other. This is not good semantics, it's not good religion, it's not good history, and it certainly isn't good policy in the perpetuation of the word. We are going to face the simple fact that the 21st century... If we are going to survive it, and we should, and we will probably, but it should be an improvement. It should be that old vices have died, new virtues have been born, and some things that were both vices and virtues have been tempered and mended so that they all add to progress. For after all, our great good in life is not the words we speak. but the use we make of the thoughts behind those words, so that every time we say I love you, we are prepared to overlook faults, we are prepared to be thoughtful, we are prepared to care, and do the very things that are part of affection, not simply send a card and forget it for another year. We've got to get these virtues into action if we expect the world to get better. We do expect it to get better. We want it to get better. We realize that it needs to get better. So we must try to do what we can to make sure that it does. So with the end of semantics, I think we have an interesting weapon. We have an interesting instrument for the achievement of better things when we study the meaning of the words we use every day. And perhaps to get rid of a few words which we... come to understand are not very desirable. We can gradually increase the vitality of our resolutions and our integrities. And in so doing, we will build towards the 21st century that is to come. For after all, the final word of all is love. And as one point, mystic point says, the world from its pain. will never be made whole till the word made flesh be the word made soul. And in this point, out of the struggle for something better, comes this mysterious thing which is called the soul, the golden wedding garment for those who go forth to the marriage of the Lamb. The golden wedding garment is the soul of good deeds. It is all the virtues. and beauties we have got. It is the improvements we have made, the transformation of body into soul, which is also the secret of alchemy. For in alchemy, all things of matter are gradually transformed into the instruments of the spirit. And in this way, we will always make Easter a very significant day. Thank you.

A word does not explain an object or a thing or a circumstance. It merely sets forth a usage. The way a word is used becomes the basis of its semantic significance.

Now, the way words are used today shouldn't happen to a dog. The words today are just playthings, but mostly they are also substitutes. for thinking and feeling and doing. The word, in other words, takes the place of a decisive action, thus relieving the individual of the possibilities of offending somebody or setting forth some truth that will be unpopular.

Now, in one of the more later dictionaries, Noah Webster, we find the same thought. Webster warns us that we are not going to find in his dictionary the meaning of anything. We're going to find the use of terms to describe matters, and that these descriptions are not always valid, they're not always correct, they're not always meaningful.

But by common habit, they have become universal. And somewhere along the lines, even the semanticist people come to the conclusion that the time has come to make words mean something. That when a word is used, it stands for a principle, it stands for a reality, it stands for a conviction or an opinion that is valid and sound. This becomes quite a problem because we've been using words for excuses for thousands of years.

And we use them every day to escape work, to escape decisions, to substitute for thoughts, all kinds of uses. to reduce the stress and strain of facts. Now, a word, if it's not factual, it has very little permanent significance.

But facts are hard things, and facts are problems that people do not like to face. Therefore, it is simpler to say something that is comparatively meaningless and useless rather than to face into an act which might be significant and of permanent value. One of the ways we can study this type of situation is to realize how these word problems have come to grow with us.

And that also they were a problem in antiquity. It is said that somebody held up a carrot to Socrates. And Socrates took the carrot.

He says, what is it? The man says, this is... A carrot.

Socrates, and what is a carrot? Well, a carrot is a vegetable. Can you show me a true vegetable?

Yes, I have the carrot. Socrates said, now I know everything and nothing. Now this is the type of way we... We use these terms, probably a little more effectively, a little more cleverly, but essentially this way.

We use words for substitutes, for thoughts, for feelings, and for actions. And the result is that they become excuses for the perpetuation of ignorance. Now, this seems difficult to believe because words are very glamorous things.

We make beautiful poetry over them. We make great speeches upon them. We do all kinds of things and we name legal holidays for them.

So we take a legal holiday which might have to do with a very important... We have an important invention or advent in the life of our country and we declare it a legal holiday. Which means it is a day for rejoicing, for consideration and for appreciation of the principle involved.

What do we do? We put on a football game, which has nothing to do with anything. And if we should cancel the football, it would probably be an act go to Congress. Because we must keep those things going.

But nobody cares really much. about what the original idea was. Half a day holiday, or a day's holiday, is the important thing. The principles involved behind words are misused all the time.

I think, where's the years ago, there was in the New Yorker, a rather cute cartoon dealing with this subject. Two prehistoric men were cutting an inscription on the wall of a Cro-Magnon cave. They had a stone and a piece of metal and they were making things, pictures, to tell a story.

And one of them turned to the other and said, I say, how do you spell dinosaur? With three legs or four legs? This is about the spirit of it.

Now, as we go along, let's try to see what happens. Take Christmas, for example. Now, there's no one in the world that objects to the fact that Christmas is one of the great holidays of Christianity and one of the great religious days of the world.

It is perfectly proper to celebrate it. It is perfectly proper to share in rejoicing. All these things are proper.

But it is also proper that this day should mean something to the life of the person. It is not simply a day to send gifts. It is not a day to take the kids to the store to see Santa Claus.

There is something more to it than this. There is a great significance behind it. And we have buried the significance in a term which has gradually come to mean something else.

So the word for Christmas, which really means the Mass of Christ, has gradually become a day of exchanging of gifts. celebrating all kinds of secular things, and if you're lucky, either a ball game or a golf tournament. These things are not, the semantics of these things are not good. Now, we use these semantics also in personal evasion.

We use words in our relations with our neighbors, with our family, and even sometimes in talking to ourselves. We are trying to escape the hard... facts of reality, and by covering them in an elaborate layer of holidays or platitudes, we think we have solved something. Now, our world at the moment is in a serious condition, very largely due to the fact that we never face on or into a fact. Facts are dangerous.

They might force us to improve our dispositions. That would be very difficult. They might make us more truthful, almost unthinkable.

We would be more generous, a good virtue, but expensive. All the time we use these words to take the place of something real. And the words themselves, as Minshew points out, are not really anything at all. Their meanings are not the same. Not long ago in our life, a hood was the front of an automobile.

Today it is headgear. We have to think of many, many things of this nature. All words change with the customs of the time.

They change with the dominant class of a group. They are influenced by education, by scientific discoveries and so forth. And speaking of scientific discoveries, we must realize that words are not necessarily answers or solutions. They are merely terms given to things for which we have little or no actual understanding. So everywhere we conceal ignorance with long terms that seem important and valuable, but they are not the answers to anything.

Now when we get further into this semantic problem, we come to the conclusion, as one expert, I think it was Kajipsky, who makes the statement, that probably the answer to the semantic problem is to keep quiet. The only way to get away from a misstatement is to say nothing. Almost anything you say will be misunderstood by somebody else, and as we look into politics, we will realize that we're in the midst of the greatest mass of this type of problem in the world.

The semantics of government are incredibly bad, because they have nothing to do with facts, and yet they are built up to resemble facts, but the facts remain untrue. And the realities of the matter are not discussed. There's hardly a paper that comes into print today in which we admit, frankly, that we are trying to conceal something, misinterpret something, or find a virtue in something we know is not very good. All these things cause the average person to sit back and believe that we live in a highly intellectual era.

We are pretty smart people. We are smart enough to deceive ourselves and each other, but not smart enough to think straight. This is one of the excuses for the rise of semantics, as a means of clarifying and washing words, so they will no longer have meanings that are inconsistent with truth.

So we can look along a little bit now, and we come to one of the great days of the year, Easter. Easter is a day that has very deep significance. And for more than about three and a half billion Christians, Easter is a sacred day.

Of that three and a half billion who admitted to a sacred day, how many of that group is actually doing anything except celebrating? They will have masses. They will have processions.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre will be overflowing with humanity. There will be masses at the Vatican. There will be all kinds of church services, which are quite proper and right and very valuable.

But after the day blows by, what has happened to public morals? Are we doing anything except celebrating? Are we doing anything except talking? Or are we doing anything except perhaps going to church for an hour? Where is the meaning of this striking into the life of the individual?

How do we as persons participate in the mystery that this event signifies? Now this is not the only event that so signifies. The journey of Muhammad to Mecca or to Jerusalem on the Arizat.

That is very important. to them. The exams of the elevation of Nirvana of the Buddha were important to those people.

Every great religious ceremony is important to someone. We have religious ceremonies in every nation of the world. We have it profoundly distributed through all of Europe and the Western Hemisphere and many parts of Near East.

And yet, this is the area. For the great wars are being fought today. We have the ceremony on the proper day, we rejoice, and the war begins the following day. This isn't the one thing that happened in World War I that became quite a scandal. That day the wars were not quite as well and tightly set as they are now.

In the trenches in Europe, on Christmas Eve, they suspended the war. And both sides celebrated together. And the war continued the next day.

Now this is kind of something that we ought to think about. Look through politics. Look through economics.

Look through education. And see what effects these important events have upon the life of the individual. We have no reason to need any form of ethics that is not available. This is here, but instead of ethics, we phone somebody and wish them well.

Now it's perfectly right to wish them well. I think some little ceremony, particularly to lonely, tired people, is very gracious and very beautiful. There's no reason why we should not continue to make all efforts to bring peace, happiness, and remembrance into the lives of those we care for. But there is more to it.

There is something that should change us. They should do something to jealousy. It should do something to cruelty. We're able to change neglect of the old and the young into something better. All these occasions are therefore spiritual opportunities, occasions in which we may be a little better than normal.

And now everybody is worried, and we are all worried a little bit, about the high price of greeting cards. Funny these days, we'd be paying $5 for an Easter card at present rates. Well? If it is a hard thing to do, and we can hardly afford it, and somebody we know will really be helped by it, be it.

But not make a habit of buying it, and then having your friends or neighbors sign it, and forget all about it. There is no reason why every word should not be backed by an integrity. When we say, I care for you, we should mean it. It should not be whispered twice a year and forgotten the rest of the time.

There is this problem of the use of words. Now we have come to the point where words become a substitute for action. The words we use today cover the whole period of what we should think, what we should believe, and what we should do.

We consider these words as substitutes for sacrifice, for thoughtfulness, for honor. and for good nature. And the result is, we haven't very much of any of these characteristics. Because you cannot buy the understanding and integrity without something more than a word.

It needs to have to have an action. It needs to have a reality behind it, which is going to carry through from one generation to another. I've known a number of people in retirement homes who once a year or twice a year, sometimes a little oftener, receive a card from some relative, wishing them well and hoping that they're happy.

This is not the real answer to this situation. The Christmas card, the semantic answer, is not the answer. Somewhere the answer lies in action. The thing that the words... semantically speaking, cannot provide is a changing action, something that becomes a valid force in a direction indicated.

If an individual is having an argument with a friend and decides to send them a card and hope it'll take care of it, this is a very small, insignificant action to take care of perhaps a very deep and lasting hurt. It is not necessarily sufficient to say, I'm sorry, and send it with a stamp on it. It might help.

But wherever there is a misunderstanding, there is the blessed privilege of correcting it, of making it real. If people haven't spoken to each other for months or years, this is the time not to keep on sending cards, but to settle down in the spirit of integrity and solve the problem. This is something we seemingly don't see much anymore.

And for lack of it, we see a whole generation going along on a surface, a surface so thin that it's going to break through at any moment. We see young people going out, doing things that are contrary to every fragment of integrity. We find the churches have a large attendance, but very small change in the living conditions.

and living convictions of people. It is not enough to go to church, or to do any of these things, or to mouth religious words. It is not enough to memorize the Ten Commandments.

It is not enough to tell all your friends about the Sermon on the Mount. The thing is to practice, to show it, to indicate in daily life that we are believers, that we believe in something. Now many people do not believe in theology, but most of those who do not believe in that still believe in integrities of some kind.

Let these integrities be therefore the symbols of our beliefs, the symbols of our remembrances, the symbols of the fact that we are going along side by side on a narrow road, and that one of these days we are going to leave the road anyway. In the meantime, let's be pleasant with those on the road with us. and try to get something that will make it understandable.

Now, Kawakawa, in his studies on semantics, brings up a number of interesting points regarding the importance of semantics. The use of words. The first of all probably is that a word has no set meaning.

A word does not have a meaning that is inflexible because it is not in itself a thing. A word is a device. It is something that has a momentary significance.

When world changes come, the word changes. And even the definition of a word changes. And words that meant something in one century means something else in another.

The word is merely an exchanging instrument to pass an idea from one person to another. And if this idea is valid, it can be useful. If it is invalid, this is merely a waste of time.

Now we are suffering at the moment from a mass of invalid terms. Terms that have no basic... Vital meaning. One of these terms is honesty. Now, honesty does have some meaning for some people, but what?

An individual who would never under any condition steal from you, in which they now regard himself as honest, will scandalize a neighbor, which is dishonest, and be perfectly convinced of it. He will find ways to do things to impose upon a friendship. He will do all kinds of tricks to accomplish something for himself under the name of friendship. And yet friendship is a nice word. Sincerely used, it is a good word.

Used as it is today, it is merely a convenient term by which we win the respect of people and then exploit it. Most of our advertising is of this type. Advertising is not basically honest.

It is dishonest in some way, but the dishonesty is carefully concealed under a false face, namely the apparent design to be of service to you. The answer is, the real reason is for them to be of service to themselves. So we have all kinds of dishonesty in advertising, which we cannot actually do much about, because the terms are so used. that they can be interpreted variously, legally or non-legally.

But here we have a world of people, most of which, as a world, believes in some form of honesty or integrity. And we're living in a society in which honesty is one of the rarest things on earth. These things tell us that little by little, we are changing the meanings of words to fit the changes in our own integrities. And for the most part the changes are a lowering of the standards. Actually we use words of integrity that were really honorable 20 years ago.

We use those same today, they are excuses for various kinds of chicanery. So here we have education. Though we always have loathed to believe that formal educators have no idea whatsoever that they are graduating potential narcotics addicts.

Are they not aware of the fact that education is influenced by economic considerations almost solely? Are they unaware of the fact that they are educating individuals to be pawns in a mechanism? They know this, but they shout to the joy of the benefits of education. And at the same time, we are in trouble. The suicide rate is up.

The narcotic rate is hovering on up. All kinds of minor varieties of chicanery are in form. Drunk driving is still a menace.

These things do not change. Education has never even intimated that it was primarily concerned with producing an honest person. It is intended to produce a skillful person in some respects.

Now if we change this semantic term from what we call skillful to honorable, so that we might say the individual will graduate as a human being with an integrity, half of the population would rise in righteous wrath. When it was attempted in the school board in Los Angeles, the board got up and practically had a riot. Mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts. shouted as loud as they could that they didn't want their children to be educated, to be honest. If they did, they'd remain poor.

So, semantically, education has become a synonymous of success economically, rather than success ethically. And very, very definite efforts are made to lower all of the restraints which might indicate control. ethical situations.

The latest reviews and patterns connection with television indicate that within the next 10 years it is expected that practically all stations will be featuring hard pornography. Why? Because that's what somebody wants to watch.

Now the problem is also another. They will blame the public and the public will be partly to blame. Because the public will be glad to pay for pornography, but is very hesitant to pay for Bach and Beethoven. We want the thing that will take us through this doldrum with excitement, not with virtue. So we have all these things to think of.

We have progress as a term, semantically. But what is progress? Progress to the average individual is not improvement.

It is wealth or accumulation or a state of dignity. All around it is the same thing. All these words that we used to love and they used to stand for such beautiful things are now simply covers for the propagation of selfishness and of general corruption.

So the semanticist comes along and says it's high time to do something about this. It is high time to realize that we are kidding ourselves. That all these slogans of nobility with which we are surrounded are empty words.

The semantic power of them is lost. They do not stand for progress anymore. They stand for a smug contentment in which the mind is perfectly willing to overlook integrities in order to keep friendships or keep business customers or to keep busy in one way or another. We have it in music. We have it in art.

We have it in everything. Years ago, I was able, in an auction sale here in Los Angeles, to secure a series, not I couldn't afford them all, but a series of Tibetan chankas, or paintings, of the life of Buddha. So I secured the painting for the nativity, and the painting for him ascending to the nishkutushita heaven to preach the doctrine to his mother. And we had three of them.

And I found out why they wanted to sell these magnificent things. Beautiful. And they told me they hoped to get enough money by selling them to get a Picasso.

And when they got it, didn't know what they had. Now this doesn't mean that Picasso couldn't paint. It doesn't mean that Salvador Dali doesn't paint. It means that they all found out that they had to find a new definition, a new way of using the word art. They had to get a new semantic meaning for art.

Art became something to be merchandised. If it sold well, it was art. If it did not sell well, it wasn't art.

And anything that sold well wasn't art to start with. So we have these types of things, the same way in dieting, the same way in all kinds of self-improvement fields and so forth. Everything is to do something incidental, something that isn't real, not to get into the very substance of things. Now we have a great movement in religion today. We have a great movement of people towards a...

New concept of religion. So what would we say semantically of the word faith? What is faith?

And the semantic term is very simple. Something which is a belief is another source of strength. Something that has to do with building security of some kind in the person. Well, we look around to find out. what faith is.

And we find that today large parts of faith are invested in the big picture. Opinions, beliefs, faiths, doctrines that have no foundation in a security of any kind. We find that faith is simply, for the most part, the willingness of an ignorant person to accept the beliefs and doctrines of another ignorant person. It is the fact that the blind leads the blind. And when the time comes to make a solid stand, some individuals will say, well...

if I'm not to believe this type of thing, what should I believe? And if you suggest the Sermon on the Mount, they will look at you kind of cross-eyed. The idea of things that 2,000 years old is just too old now. We've got to have something better, something up to today.

We can't go on the basis of love thy neighbor or something of this nature. We've got to go rather on the idea that our neighbor is open to our exploitation at any time. So all the words that we use have a tendency to get into bad trouble.

We do not know how to say honesty, integrity, virtue. What is virtue? Virtue, it would seem, is a moral asset. Virtue is a condition of character which prevents an individual from performing an unhappy, unfortunate, or unrealistic action. Virtue is, after all, A life according to the laws of life, according to the realities of nature, according to the experiences even of science.

Virtue is to keep the rules. We interpret it entirely differently. We don't think of people as being virtuous anymore. We think of them being smart or stupid. The problem of virtue doesn't even come in.

So we go along and we buy products and we read the ads. They're good for everything. There's nothing that they won't take care of.

Then we find out that they have heavily loaded with all kinds of dopes and preservatives and insecticides and everything you can think of. We are supposed to overlook that. We are also supposed to assume that all these chemicals are perfectly healthy, which they are not. And if we doubt it and think the product should not be on the market, then the manufacturer...

We're going to a conniption fit. We are interfering with his inalienable right to do as he pleases. So sub-semantics gets against the hard time.

And we come back now probably to our most important consideration, and that is its religious values. We are in great need today for a recognition of religion that escapes the narrow boundaries of creedal limitations and... ...credal superstitions.

Now, it's hard to believe that a religion could be superstitious. It isn't, in substance, but most of its members are susceptible of superstition. They may not believe it, they may not realize it, but more nearly all religions are loaded with people who claim to believe and then act completely outside of what they claim. We have probably over... Two million churchgoers in the United States who are completely dedicated to their churches.

We have another 10 or 15 million who are moderately dedicated. And yet, in spite of the fact that over half of the American people go to church at least occasionally, and many regularly, our crime rate is going up every year. Why? Because somewhere along the line, the people who claim to believe have found ways to support the claim without improving character. They take it for granted now that these mistakes they're making are inevitable, that they're really perfectly honest if they decide that dishonesty is necessary.

So we take all kinds of political liberties, we lose values, we fail to introduce integrity in children. And so little by little, semantically speaking, the good words are gradually being turned into bad words. Government is now being turned into politics.

Statesmanship and those type of things are now changed into office holdings. We find also that big corporations are no longer monuments in the society. Somebody has bought 51% of them.

Everything is sacrificed, and to ever discuss it, to mention To point out it is to perform a great sorrow to civilization. It is terrible to take away from people the belief that they can do wrong and be right. So we have to find ways of doing this.

And I think the simplest way of doing it is the semantic way. Talk less and do more. Do not frustrate words by constant misuse of them.

Try to find out what you can do about anything for which you would normally phrase only a statement. I think we have to come down to final realization that we've got to stop using words as excuses for conduct. We've got to get out of the idea that a word can be so twisted as to condone false or vices.

We've reached the point now, I notice, in the reason... recent journals, where various actions which not long ago we considered very bad are now perfectly commendable. It is no longer necessary to worry about things that were moral issues.

It's not necessary anymore to worry about how to take care of children. Let them grow. The idea that they might need integrity is an infliction. It places a responsibility upon parents.

We're much more interested in escaping responsibility. So the loss of interest and responsibility is gradually transforming this into a virtue. And everybody who maybe gets rid of the responsibilities is regarded as fortunate or enjoying heavenly favor. But in reality, they're making only trouble to themselves and each other.

So semantics comes along and tries to help us to clean words. Now we know we can't make permanent cleaning. Semantics is not going to tell us that it's going to give us the ultimate meaning of words. We can't do it.

Because there are no ultimate meanings in a world of constant change. But it's going to try and give us a world of improvement in change. The changement is going to make things better. And that improvement is going to mean that character will improve, not simply disintegrate. Now we take the penalty off of a crime, but it still remains a sin.

We find ways of exonerating the individual for his mistakes because we like to make the same ones. Therefore, if everybody wants to make the same mistake, this action becomes a virtue. It's very difficult because we have an enormous language and it is getting bigger every day. And the words that are used less and less.

are the words on the high cultural levels. We have less and less of integrities and more and more compromises. So how can we get around it? Well, one thing is to use only meaningful words. Well, we know a word is in bad trouble.

We don't have to use it. We don't have to use words and leave them hanging without meaning. When we speak of faith, we have to put something with it.

Faith in what? Faith of what? Faith is a belief, but we've got to enlarge it.

Faith must be enlarged to mean the practice of a belief. The belief isn't enough. Faith means that the individual is obeying that belief, living in harmony with it, and dedicating life to its preservation. If he was looking for another word, if he wants the word truth, he must try to find out what truth is. truth is.

And if he finds out even a little truth, he has to do something about it. Now, truth is very difficult because it changes with every generation. Things which a few years ago were truthful are no longer. And things that were not long ago untruthful have now become truth by usage.

But to the person who is thoughtful, the truth must always be the best available meaning. We can't know what exists and how long it will be that way. But when we say that truth, we mean the supremeness of our present knowledge of a fact.

A proof of truth becomes a reality for that day, for that year, for that generation. We may expect it to grow. Truth must always increase because we must always grow.

But truth must never go backwards. It must never mean a belief in less or lower. It must be always forward to something better and something reality. Now, what use is a truth? What use is it to believe something noble and beautiful?

Well, it inspires, it makes us a little happier, but unless this truth builds itself into our character and becomes a part of our basic integrities, it does us very little good. We have two kinds of truth, therefore. The kind that we use every day and the kind that we must face when we leave this world.

The truth we take with us today is totally neglected. It is only the truth of what we can do while we're here. There is no estimation of values beyond the present standard of integrities.

I love speaking. A philosopher, a politician said not long ago, there will be no end to wars. Wars are inevitable. And they're inevitable why?

They're not inevitable at all. Semantically, they're completely possible of solution. Inevitable means only one thing. They will not change unless believing changes. Wars end when people...

have no longer any faith in the war, or perhaps more practically, have no profit to derive from it. Nearly all wars are wars of profit. It used to be that it was wars largely of believings.

It was the religion of one group set against another. Then the war was a struggle to gain domination of the minds and hearts of other people. This factor is now come back. completely negligible. The problem today is to dominate and enslave and control a people politically, socially, and economically.

And while this point of view exists, there is no truth, because truth does not permit any of those things. It's entirely more a noble and a proper way of life. So here we are on a wonderful day.

We are on the day that celebrates The resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. We have all thought of this. For it would be too many people, it means if he rose, he took with him the mystery of death, and we all rise together. In his death and resurrection, we have the bond between the eternal and the temporal.

We have a hope that we will also rise from the darkness. of material existence. Now this thought can be extended.

It can be beautifully extended. This symbol recognizes or perhaps summarizes the idea of the victory of truth over life and truth over death. In other words death is one of these things that is so inevitable that semantically we can't do anything with it. We can do various ways of trying to prevent it or trying to hasten it, but the interpretation of it semantically is very difficult. Therefore, the only salvation we have from the term is to recognize the miracle of the resurrection.

The resurrection is, of course, not limited to a person, not even limited to the Godhead. A resurrection is an improvement in the inner resources of an individual. A resurrection is a release of internal virtue.

It is the ascent of the person into a higher condition, whereby in bringing with it a larger world and a greater participation in the eternity in which we exist. Therefore, this season and this time particularly, we have an idea of the power that lives and dies and is resurrected in the service of mankind. We have, therefore, a belief that there is something beyond this life. And the moment we believe this, we break faith or break contact with materialism.

Now, semantically, materialism is a bad word anyway, because no matter what you say with it, you're not sure of anything. Materialism is the assumption that there is nothing beyond this life. This assumption is... Not true-bable.

The difficulty with it is the same as with every use of a term that should be approached semantically, but is approached literally. In semantics, we might say that resurrection is a symbol word, a word which carries with it upward change and an unfoldment. The bud is resurrected as the flower.

And the flower is resurrected in the seed. Resurrection is the release of a moreness, a greaterness, from within that which is less than itself, apparently. So actually, immortality is the right of every human being to grow.

It is the right of the individual who has an enemy to get over it. It is the right of an individual whose morals are poor to improve his character. It is not only enough for him to prevent breaking laws, which are the laws of the state, but for breaking sins, which are the laws of the soul.

We therefore find that from the beginning, all beliefs, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Brahmin, Confucian, Taoist, all beliefs have one belief in common, and that is that it all means something. That there is something that is hope, there is something that is growth, there is something that is reality, there is something that is integrity in these doctrines. And against that is a rather cold, icy statement that we can't prove it, that we can't actually prove that these things are true. Yet we can prove it in a way.

We prove it every year. With the death and resurrection of plants, we both prove it all the time. With the rise and fall and rise again of faith within ourselves, we find our own lives changing.

And sometimes beautiful things happen when we think we've come to the end. There's always hope. St. Paul lists hope as one of the great hopes for mankind. Life, love, hope.

These are the great hopes. beliefs, for which there can be no substitute. So we can take a word like love and approach that sartically.

And we can find every kind of love you can think of, from the individual who loves a hand at poker, to the individual who wants to change the course of religious history. We can have all kinds of love. Love of family, love of beauty, love of children, love of God, love of nature.

All these things are part of love, and it is the duty of our inner life to allow this love to grow. Now, when it grows up, it does not discard what it loved before. It picks it up and carries it into a higher level.

The artist who painted very marioca things, when not very good, gets enlightenment. He keeps on painting, but all of a sudden a new quality comes into his art. And this is particularly noticeable in Oriental art, and especially in the paintings of Sesshu.

Sesshu was a Zen master, and he ascended to all the levels of the Zen teaching. And a Zen master going into an art gallery and looking at the paintings of Sesshu will say, Ah! This painting, he had achieved the third level of enlightenment.

That painting, he was in the fourth degree. This painting, in the fifth degree. But this little sketch here goes back to the first degree. But gradually, through his art, you can discover the development of his own life. Until finally, in the great scroll of Sesshu, he achieves the fullness.

For he attains in this picture the full expression of the reality of existence. These things are all told in the things that he does. Now this would be semantics. Sessler's Great Scroll is a masterpiece of semantics and is so prejudiced as one of the most valuable paintings in the world. But this is part of a growth upwards through various degrees.

We can start in by being a family cook and end by being... cooks of eternity. We can do all kinds of common things and because of the integrity to ourselves, these common things become uncommon. They become tremendously valuable and they show a release of integrity. So we can say that the family was not getting along well, suddenly gets better.

And suddenly better things happen. And we say it's growth. And we send another family that was getting along fairly well, and now it's all in dope and narcotics. That family is deteriorating.

These things are all part of a great scale. And the purpose of semantics is to make codes and qualities of life consistent with the meaning of words. So that when we say a certain word, we mean a positive contribution to progress.

When we say what essential kindness is, it must be because we are essentially kind. And that this kindness is not simply in our word, but in our practice. For kindness in a word is very flimsy, therefore very poor semantically. But when this word is transmuted into a way of life that continues year after year, to this world and beyond, then we are kind. So all around we are using so many beautiful words, and using them so badly, that we are gradually lowering the thresholds of our integrities.

We believe that these words do mean what we think they mean. When in reality, words mean only what the inner consciousness of the person using the word has achieved. If we are inwardly awakened, the word definition is improved.

If we continue to go along as we were, or even descend into a lower stratum of action, then the word does not mean anything. It is just simply a cover for a term. Now in our work with people in prisons and in our work in various reform agencies, we find constantly the bitter struggle to retain the status quo. The individual doesn't really want to change. The idea of becoming better to him means only one thing.

It means that the pickpocket has got to give up picking pockets, which is his way of life. and his source of income. Therefore, he will not vote for the laws that abolish pickpockets. And yet it is perfectly probable that in time that law will have to change, or the exoneration will have to change, and people will no longer be entitled to feel sorry for him because he has to pickpockets to live.

They will be glad for him when he finds a better way to make a life. All of these things change the meanings of words. They change their uses.

They change their philosophies. We find them in medicine. We find them in art, music.

We have a tremendous quality of now of popular music. Most of it is pretty bad, but it is popular and it makes money. And because it is successful financially, we will have it on television world without end. The individual who has to listen to it is going to get sick, and this sickness is going to gradually corrupt him until he believes it also. Wherever the person comes into the presence for the first time of something that to him is wrong, and he knows it, he should not give it a second look.

He shouldn't gradually permit himself to be eroded away or convinced by people who do not know either. So we get all these kinds of things and we come finally to our Easter party. Here we know a spiritual mystery.

We know that essentially all the religions of the world have this one thing in common. If we have the understanding, we will find that the 72 names of God will always be there. In our large book, there is a plate. showing the 72 names, by the way.

72 names for one God. This is a story. Each of these names is a semantic term arising from the experience of a people.

It replies to some who gain great culture and to others who are still in primitive conditions. It replies to those who survive persecution for the sake of truth. And it applies to those who tried and failed.

It becomes a part of the process. The life of every living creature is in some mysterious way the most primitive person in the jungles of Africa or in the eastern East Indies. All have some semantic reality. And this fact is probably our greatest safety.

If we accept as semantically and honestly is right. We can go on then without waiting much for honesty to pass through all these multitudinous stages. It gradually becomes evident, as it did for the last million years, that those things which are the virtues of life have survived and will survive, and those things which are the vices of life perish.

and nations perish with them. There is no need to ask for final proof of integrity. It is in every page of history.

It is in every experience of private citizens. There are realities that are above semantic question. One of those realities is truth, which must inevitably survive. Yet there will be all kinds of definitions of truth. Truth may be regarded as the definition of truth.

definite effort to get a witness to tell the truth in a court of law. I probably won't anyway. But the truth in principle is that all things shall be measured by their intents, by their realities, their virtues, and their meanings. And truth, therefore, becomes a symbol of honesty, virtue, integrity, patience, kindness, peace, love. Self-sacrifice, service, all these things are parts of truth.

Therefore, they can be fitted into the semantic picture. They will change in detail with each generation. But in no generation will peace fail if it is used.

And in no generation will honor fail if it is actually applied. The reason these things have never succeeded so well Because no people, or very few people, have made the tremendous sacrifice necessary to prove them. So we are down in the 20th century, moving in toward the 21st century.

We bring with us several great holidays, of two of the two most important in our religion, being Christmas and Easter. These become symbols of the things that we all believe, and should believe. First, the truth. is born into this world for the salvation of mankind. And that this truth is very simple.

Love one another. Keep the peace. Be honest.

Share equally. And put the common good above all individual ambition and aspiration. This will mean something that will go on to the end of time and never change.

We will believe this as long as we exist. This is a solid term. So we might as well start now. So instead of just simply sending that Easter card, which is a kindness, no one should deny that it comes from the heart. It is something.

But with it, let us see if we cannot transform some part of our life to match the card. If it is something in which we should learn to be kind, or to be generous, or to understand each other. Let these things grow with the card, and where it may be a descent to a stranger whom we have not known for a long time, let it be accompanied by a letter or a note asking more about that person, the ways in which we can get together again, the achievements that have made life better, and if there have been sorrows, that we should share them together. Semantically speaking, there has to be a real meaning for these.

Rather than simply a physical expenditure of two bits on a 25 cent stamp. All the good things are there, but we only take the surface of them. Twice a year maybe we send a card, the rest of the year we never even speak to each other.

This is not good semantics, it's not good religion, it's not good history, and it certainly isn't good policy in the perpetuation of the word. We are going to face the simple fact that the 21st century... If we are going to survive it, and we should, and we will probably, but it should be an improvement. It should be that old vices have died, new virtues have been born, and some things that were both vices and virtues have been tempered and mended so that they all add to progress.

For after all, our great good in life is not the words we speak. but the use we make of the thoughts behind those words, so that every time we say I love you, we are prepared to overlook faults, we are prepared to be thoughtful, we are prepared to care, and do the very things that are part of affection, not simply send a card and forget it for another year. We've got to get these virtues into action if we expect the world to get better. We do expect it to get better. We want it to get better.

We realize that it needs to get better. So we must try to do what we can to make sure that it does. So with the end of semantics, I think we have an interesting weapon.

We have an interesting instrument for the achievement of better things when we study the meaning of the words we use every day. And perhaps to get rid of a few words which we... come to understand are not very desirable. We can gradually increase the vitality of our resolutions and our integrities. And in so doing, we will build towards the 21st century that is to come.

For after all, the final word of all is love. And as one point, mystic point says, the world from its pain. will never be made whole till the word made flesh be the word made soul. And in this point, out of the struggle for something better, comes this mysterious thing which is called the soul, the golden wedding garment for those who go forth to the marriage of the Lamb. The golden wedding garment is the soul of good deeds.

It is all the virtues. and beauties we have got. It is the improvements we have made, the transformation of body into soul, which is also the secret of alchemy.

For in alchemy, all things of matter are gradually transformed into the instruments of the spirit. And in this way, we will always make Easter a very significant day. Thank you.

Transcript for:Exploring Semantics in Religion and Society

Transcript for:
Exploring Semantics in Religion and Society