Reference desire,

I was hoping for some insight regarding this concept or a point to something reference it on the forum. I couldnt find anything. Brad Warner in "Sit Down and Shut Up" in reference to desire in the Twelvefold chain wrote,

"By reading its (his book) contents you’re making them part of your mental makeup. Or so you think. The funny thing is, though – and try getting your cranium around this one because its really worthwhile – if these ideas were not part of your mental makeup to begin with, you’d never have been able to understand them in the first place. What you perceive as words written on this page are just funny shapes that trigger images that already exist in your mind as the one that were in my mind when I wrote the words. But they’re close enough that we can communicate. Ultimately, though the ideas in this book don’t come from me or from Dogen or from Buddha. They come from you – from your previous experiences with similar words, from all the things your family and your teachers and the cartoon shows and commercials on TV told you about what certain concepts mean, and so on and on."

So once this is realized nothing changes? We still need the "funny little shapes" to learn what we already know. having a hard time with this one.

Mike