No of course not. Its some metaphysical plug about relationships or something. One of those 'one hand clapping' things. I guess the point is to get you to stop overanalyzing. Which I'm doing.
But no, I didn't get my mind blown by monks in semantic circles. I guess I'm not ready to be enlightened.
Uh, no. Lots of them definitely rely on knowing who the monks are, their reputations, and their relationships to one another. And other facts about the world in which they occur ("Three pounds of flax!"). One is not even going to get at the interesting parts of them without that. Lots will come off as gibberish or as confusing in ways that they are not intended to be without that context.
> Sure you can 'explain them' but everybody hears them where their mind is at now.
It's not about explaining them, it's about the coming-to-terms phase of reading from How to Read a Book. Even smart folks would probably have a bad time approaching a graduate-level math text book without a little context so they get where it's even starting from and understand the references and vocabulary that the book was written assuming the reader would already have.
I hope I didn't do any harm here. I was hoping to share some of what I thought was pretty mind bending.
The physical universe is as a reflected image on the surface of a lake, illusory.
However, the "level" at which that is true is above/below/beyond the "level" at which there "really" is wind and flag.