Amy: Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the comment!

Diego: If a statement of pure description is made, “You’re hair is red,” the speaker is not making the person’s hair red, they are only saying what they see. In the Hindu tradition there is the fable of the man who goes into a dark shed and sees a snake in the corner and is frozen with terror. That man will swear up and down that they see a snake and can describe it accurately. Then a friend comes along, flips on the light and the snake is revealed to be a coil of rope. The frightened man was not saying anything about the truth, only what he perceived.

The statement, “I love you,” can have thousands of meanings, all given after the fact. But, the first part of the statement is key, “I.” I am saying this, am I not?

The Buddha also said that each person receives the same teaching in accordance with their attributes. The teaching is the same, its affects may not be. Thanks for the comment!

Many times statements made by someone are indeed, self-descriptive. However, sometimes they are descriptive; for instance, if your doctor is attempting to give his diagnosis of a problem you have, he is not speaking about himself, he is trying to tell you something.

In the spiritual sense, if someone says, “I love you”, it may actually mean that you need to love yourself; it may mean that the person has discovered something about you worth loving; and it may of course be self-descriptive. The meaning of the message is to be found in the state of both sender and receiver.

The Buddha for instance, was considered to be a different order of human being, so when he made a statement it reached different people on different levels and was understood by those people at the level that they could understand it. He said, “seek your own salvation diligently”.

Now ask yourself, what does that mean to me?

Thank you for the thought provoking article.