All Buddhist language is an attempt to take us out of conceptual thinking, and to point us to the reality of our lives.
Because we are meaning-making-story-telling beings, we are always painting a world. Even if a teacher directs us to the activity of painting, we make a picture of his activity.
The whole lineage is this dialectic of freeing words and trapping words.
It is as if we are within a mountain made up of the bones of our ancestors. Our awakening voices, together, make what is solid empty.