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.We come closer to our original Selfthrough making multiple interpretations and translations, if we can only listen to what theinterpreter is telling us.Tozan asked Ungan, What should I do when I want to meet my originalSelf ? Ungan replied, Ask the interpreter -- ask the messenger. Tozan said, I m asking right now. Ungan asked, What is he telling you? The Inquiring Impulse Baba wawa -- is there anything said or not?The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse.Subtly included within the true, inquiry and response come up together.We are constantly translating our experience to ourselves and to others, but we often don tlisten to the interpreter.Inquiry and response often don t flow smoothly.Virtually all of us havesome difficulty deciphering the messages of our lives.Psychotherapists sometimes intervene in this process by offering interpretations or reframings;often, though, clients seem unwilling to entertain alternative descriptions of their lives.After all, how can we expect clients to attend to therapists messages if they cannot listen to what their owninterpreter is telling them?In psychotherapy, even when we ask questions carefully crafted to help deepen experience --such as the wonderful unique redescription or experience of experience questions drafted byWhite and Epston107 -- clients often can t respond.A client tells us how they stood up against theiranger and managed to forgive someone and perform a kind deed; we ask what does this tell youabout yourself ? and they say I don t know. If we ask clients why they did something, theyoften are not able to give a clear reason.At the very onset of treatment, we frequently ask, whatbrings you here? and the client often responds, I don t know. Some clients cannot find words; other clients get lost in a sea of words.Clients sometimes talkon and on but as we listen to them we realize we have no idea what the issue is.Therapists alsosometimes talk excessively: we find ourselves filling up the silence with a response while we arestill unclear about our point.We don t do this only in the consulting room.Even with the peoplewe most love we often find ourselves either falling silent or babbling.This can happen withpainful topics, and also with topics where we are so filled with wonder or happiness we can tarticulate it.In our confusion, we all babble at each other in the language of baba wawa. We may thinkwe are being clear and direct, but our words snare us.This happens especially if we listen andtalk from a self-centered perspective which is mostly concerned with what we stand to gain orlose from the interchange.If we wish to hear each other --whether it be as client and therapist,partner and spouse, or student and teacher -- we must learn to attend instead to the inquiringimpulse, to the source from which baba wawa springs.Sometimes we have to babble in order to recover our sense of wonder or strengthen ourselvesto face the truth; sometimes, immersed in truth or wonder, we babble.At such times it can behard to understand our selves and the people talking to us.When we are in the midst of babbling baba wawa, is there anything said or not?Rabbi Levi Yitzhak once came to an inn where many merchants werestopping on the way to market their wares.The place was far from the rabbi shome town and so no one knew the holy man.In the early morning the guestswanted to pray, but since there was only a single pair of phylacteries108in thewhole house, one after another put them on and rattled off his prayer, andhanded them on to the next.When they had all prayed, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak called the young men to him,saying that he wanted to ask them something.When they had come close, helooked gravely into their faces and said, slowly and intensely, prolonging eachword: Ma -- ma-- ma;va-- va-- va. What do you mean? cried the young men, but he only repeated the samemeaningless syllables.Then they took him for a fool
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