Welcome ☺️ if you’re really interested, I frankly recommend trying meditation rather than try to understand the theory. The Way App from Henry Shukman is pretty good.

Op’s analogy isn’t about verifying meditation experiences as scientific facts, but about how both Zen and science are rigorous, disciplined studies of reality, just through different lenses. Zen isn’t about abstraction or quantification; it’s about direct, unmediated experience (and “peer review” happens with sangha and the teacher). The comparison is poetic, not literal. It’s kinda highlighting that both paths require clarity, humility, and a willingness to see things as they are, not as we wish them to be.

Yeah, if you really start breaking down sentences, to their individual words and their respective concepts, everything falls apart.

Yes.

Yes.

Go on. Read that again. Or write that again, slowly.

Yes, this is pretty much exactly what happens. It’s the map-territory problem, but with every single word. We have rough agreements on what some words mean. Easy enough with what we take to be solid objects. This X is a cross, like two objects intersecting. Yes, we know what X is. Okay, now do the same thing to every word in this sentence. And then again to every word in this sentence. Oh… how about subjective experiences? Love. Sadness. What are those? How did you come to think of those words when describing love? Were you born with language? You don’t inherently know what anything is. You just have a bunch of code in your head.