From the Buddhist standpoint of reality as a field of interdependent events in continuous flux, if words stand in external relation to that reality, they are perpetually trying to hit a moving target. If instead language arises from engagement with the field itself, then the words, reality, and speaker will express the moment together as part of the flux. As the contexts change, so also will the forms of expression. Thus, starting with the sound of words as his foundation, Kūkai spoke of the internal relations among sound-word-reality. Because the cosmos of things and the utterance of words are both vibrations, truth-words (shingon) arise from the resonance among the three. We could say Kūkai’s view is that the truth of words arises from their ability to confer with, rather than refer to, reality. […]
Another way Japanese philosophers of language analyze how words can address the fluidity of the field of impermanent, interdependent events is to develop theories that focus on the predicate rather than subject of the sentence as the nucleus of meaning. The sentential subject is usually a noun that refers to a substance and the predicate its attribute. To capture a world of events rather than things, on the other hand, one can focus on the meaning as emerging from predicate, the subject becoming in effect a modifier rather than a cause or agent of the event.
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