Almost all Cambodian homes have a red cloth talisman, called a yantra (or yo-an in Khmer) hanging in their house. It is covered with all sorts of symbols, the most common of which is a squiggly spiral called an ounalome.
Yantra with dozens of ounalome spirals
The ubiquitous ounalome is a well-known and revered symbol in Cambodia, but if you ask homeowners what it symbolizes, they have no clue what it means. In fact, the literature tells you that it does have a meaning, namely, the path of life spiraling more and more narrowly upwards, until it reaches the straight path to enlightenment. However, almost no one knows this. It somehow retains its symbolic value, even though its significance it not known.
Ever since I was in school taking literature and art classes, I have always asked the question, “Must a symbol represent something, or can it stand on its own?” For example, most high school students must discuss the symbolism of the raven in Poe’s famous poem. The discussion concludes with agreement that the raven is a symbol of grief and death.
I prefer to think of symbols as evoking an inner experience, rather than representing something. Thus, for me, the Raven evokes the grief of the loss of a loved one. It’s like the definition of a Christian sacrament that I learned as a child: “an outward expression of an inner experience.”
I recall going to a Christmas Eve candlelight service many years ago. At the end, everyone lit and held a candle while Silent Night filled the worship hall. I found tears streaming down my face, as the ritual was so moving, even though I could not have formally defined precisely what the candles and the hymn were representing.
In fact, I would argue that the analysis of the meaning of a symbol moves the center of operation from the right brain to the left brain. In this way, the right-brained, holistic experience of the symbol is diminished. Thus, I would argue that the more explicit and obvious the meaning of a symbol is, the less effective it is as a true symbol.
I used to puzzle over the lyrics of (Nobel laureate) Bob Dylan’s songs. Many of his lines seem to make no sense, and yet the listener comes away with an overall experience. I used to try to figure out the lyrics to “All along the Watchtower”, which starts with the line:
“There must be some kind of way outta here, Said the joker to the thief ”
What the heck does it all mean? And yet, the overall effect of the song is quite powerful.
Tom Taylor, in an article in faroutmagazine.co.uk, says it succinctly:
it is the ambiguity and philosophical scope of such songs that makes them stand out as masterpieces in the world of modern music.
I once had to memorize a French poem by Paul Verlaine, and one line has always stayed with me:
Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise
Où l’Indécis au Précis se joint.
“Poetry is where the vague and the precise come together, as best described in a ‘gray song’.”
All those literature classes where our left brains analyzed the ‘meaning’ of poems somehow missed the point. It is the holistic right-brain experience that counts, not whether a symbol represents this or that. Does the lotus represent yin or yang? I don’t care. It is a flower that evokes a sense of beauty within us.
