If something does not have a name or a meaning, does it exist?

May 1

Does everything need a name? A meaning?

Imagine if something has no name, no meaning, or no definition, does it exist? Consider skibidi, shamwow, 6–7, or 42, must they have a meaning to exist? Why not let them be as they are? Neither flawed nor perfect. The suchness of things.

“Formless
I am
Form me
You cage me
Name me
Ten thousand things
I become”

— Daniel Chow

The human mind has a deep fixation on analyzing, identifying, and categorizing. We do this to make sense of ourselves — our thoughts, our place in time, in space, in relation to everything around us. This is how we locate and anchor our existence in time and space.

Imagine yourself in a void. Notice what arises — anxiety, restlessness, perhaps even terror. We need named things. Known things. Without them, we feel lost and adrift.

But what if you gently released that need? Simply let it rest, to let it be. Allowed something to exist without a name, without a category, without a place in your inner filing system.

Some things live more truthfully as no-thing, no-name, no-place, no-time. Be present with what simply is, before the mind moves in to arrange it.

Still your mind. When you are left with no-thing, no-name, no-time, you are left with your intuition. Suchness. Be still, be quiet, listen.

This is the paradox. And you don't need to resolve it.

“At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact, I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

— 2009, “Einstein on Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms” by Albert Einstein, Quote Page 97, Dover Publication, Mineola, New York. (Originally published in 1931 by Covici-Friede, Inc., New York)