I am aware how words add to the clutter in my mind. So useful in communication, words become clutter when I intend to understand an experience, become more deeply aware of some reality, or see clearly what a situation demands from me.
Words actually interfere with insight. While they may on occasion guide me to an awareness, it is more likely that words will become so much clutter that distracts and interferes with awareness. Words obscure insight.
This is especially true when I consider rules and precepts. Rules add to the clutter. While rules are very useful in a cultural setting, their effectiveness is limited to how people might relate to one another. Rules are a way of setting expectations among people regarding the kind of behavior we want of one another.
Rules are effective and useful in defining how we “want things to be.” Rules are not so useful when they become personal, when they enter my mind and become the focus of my attention. They add to the clutter in my my mind, a distraction.
Rules may from time to time become a place of reference, a way of noticing “this is how things are.” However, on a personal level, rules that direct any activity are not so useful in helping me to understand how things are. Rules do not lead to insight, but they sometimes may arise from insight.
Rules are clutter if they function like the white line down the middle of the highway that becomes the center of my attention. They are a peripheral reference point, not a focus of awareness.
The lame effectiveness of rules is evident in how I might learn a new skill such as pruning trees Rulesare are very limited in being able to teach me how I might best become intimately familiar with a way of behavior or acting. If I have a teacher who praises me or corrects me based on how I am pruning trees, the voice of my teacher soon becomes the focus of my attention. I want to please them, conform to their words, avoid their criticism.
Rather than focusing and becoming more aware of my pruning behavior, I pay attention to the voice, the rules of my teacher. I want to learn the skill of pruning trees, not the skill of listening to my teacher. The rules of my teacher become clutter in my mind and obscure my focus. The rules actually interfere with my learning. Rules of my teacher become a distraction, an abject of attention, rather than an assist.
Insight demands the elimination of clutter in my mind, and rules add to the clutter. Insight does not come from words and is typically inhibited by words, the rules of thought. Insight is an awareness that might generate words, but it is an experience of reality that is unspeakable.
Rules and precepts do not capture the undefinable mystery of reality that is accessed without concepts and words. Even though they may have some usefulness in explaining how things are, rules do not tell me how to experience reality..
Rules may suggest how things are, but they are not helpful in telling me what to do. Rules that tell me what to do add to the clutter of my mind.