That’s reasonable, but what I was actually thinking when I wrote that was that grasping in its negative sense is a kind of reaching out - a kind of coming out of oneself - as if the meaning is “out there”. Meaning isn’t something that leaves a person’s mouth and enters another person’s ear, so to speak. I was suggesting that to understand what somebody means, requires that the listener/reader has shared the same experience(s) to some degree, or in a general sense. Of course the listener/reader can interpolate and extrapolate and put his imaginative faculties to good use. He doesn’t have to share the exact same experience - just the fundamentals.
Communication is definitely about relationship. I liked Q’s point about harmony/disharmony. Some people just never seem to understand each other.
Just that ‘reading from the same book’ helps, following certain disciplines and teachings perhaps correlates neuronal matrixes, or at least allows one to understand context ~ the lack of which is the main problem. I also find scientists to share a similar outlook or religion - if you will.
Indeed and also about a desire to understand, it often seams to me that people only take in what they want to hear or what agrees with their position/perspective. Selflessness is perhaps a critical component of proper communication.
I would think that a highly trained Buddhist [or similar] has the listening capacity required.
Beyond the altruistic, I find reality to be quite fluid, there is the world and the subject, neither is an island but both relate to each other and form the environment [which is not purely the world as we add input and change things]. Perhaps then, comprehension sometimes relies on not causing turbulence, being of the same ocean.