The Word

Names for a fact we still cannot hold still

A lexicon, not a dictionary of settled meanings. These are not translations of one idea. Each belongs to its own language, history, and intellectual world.

28 plates. Etymology is an opening, not a destiny.

1. awareness

   English

   Awareness is consciousness without the cathedral: a plainer word for being in contact.

2. awakening

   English

   To wake is the oldest metaphor for a change in what appears. It is a metaphor. It is also, sometimes, a life.

3. attention

   English, from Latin

   Attention is the stretch. James said that what we attend to is our life. The etymology opens a history. It is not destiny.

4. psyche

   English, from Greek · ψυχή

   Before it was a clinic, psyche was breath that leaves a body.

5. soul

   English

   Soul is the word this house will not reduce, and will not protect from history.

6. mind

   English

   Mind once meant memory. It still does, when we say “keep in mind.”

7. witness

   English

   A witness is a knower who can be called. The inner witness is that grammar turned inward.

8. self

   English

   Self is a small word that claims to be someone.

9. presence

   English, from Latin

   Presence is being-here, which is harder than it sounds.

10. memory

    English, from Latin

    Memory is how a mind has a past, and how a self claims to be the same one.

11. perception

    English, from Latin

    Perception is a taking. The world is not simply given; it is taken, and sometimes mistaken.

12. remembrance

    English

    Remembrance is memory with a direction: toward what must not be dropped.

13. spirit

    English, from Latin

    Spirit begins as breath. Later it becomes wind, ghost, courage, alcohol, and God.

14. nous

    Ancient Greek · νοῦς

    Nous is not “mind” as English now uses it. It is a power of seeing what cannot be counted.

15. noesis

    Ancient Greek · νόησις

    If nous is a power, noesis is the act. Husserl later borrowed the pair.

16. gnosis

    Ancient Greek · γνῶσις

    Gnosis is knowledge as recognition, later a name for saving knowledge, later a modern slogan.

17. anamnesis

    Ancient Greek · ἀνάμνησις

    Anamnesis is not ordinary memory. In Plato it is the soul’s recollection of what it knew before birth.

18. contemplation

    English, from Latin

    To contemplate was first to mark a space of sky and watch. The temple is in the word.

19. imagination

    English, from Latin

    Imagination is the power of images: to have them when the thing is absent, and sometimes when it never was.

20. intuition

    English, from Latin

    Intuition is a looking-into. Later it became a hunch. The looking is the older claim.

21. dhawq

    Arabic · ذوق

    Dhawq is taste. In Sufi usage it is a knowing that cannot be replaced by a description of honey.

22. dhikr

    Arabic · ذكر

    Dhikr is remembrance as an act: to mention, to keep present, often the name of God.

23. sati

    Pali · सति

    Sati is keeping-in-mind. The English “mindfulness” is a translation with a career of its own.

24. citta

    Pali / Sanskrit · चित्त

    Citta is heart-mind: the mind that can be colored, trained, and, in some analyses, is not a self.

25. ruach

    Hebrew · רוּחַ

    Ruach is wind before it is spirit. The same word moves trees and, in some verses, the breath of God.

26. qalb

    Arabic · قلب

    Qalb is the heart as a turning thing: the organ that can face, and can be flipped.

27. simulate

    English, from Latin

    A simulation is a made likeness. Whether a made likeness of a mind is a mind is the whole trouble of the word.