In many traditions, I think, contemplation is viewed as something that must be developed in a fairly prosaic way - by completing daily exercises. Just as a child at school might do tasks to practise arithmetic or writing, so a regular return to contemplation is viewed as a foundational requirement in the incremental process of transforming the self. You should not expect to sit down on your first day of anapanasati meditation or on your first morning with Ignatius' spiritual exercises and witness the sky breaking open. Insight develops slowly, step by step, the result of a commitment to regular contemplative work.
Actually, different traditions vary in the extent to which they anticipate instantaneous results from practices of contemplation. In Buddhism, the possibility of sudden insight is countenanced more strongly in Mahayana than in Theravada thought. And some Christian traditions envision a spontaneous experience of ecstasy that is deep, immersive, and immanent in the practice. Thus, for some, contemplation is like a process of planting seeds - a garden will grow but only very slowly. For others, it may result in a spontaneous flash of insight - something sudden and immediate, arising in the moment. But flashes of insight are hard to sustain. There are moments when the world seems very clearly delineated: hard-edged and glittering in the winter sun. But these moments do not last and, five minutes later, one is once again listening to difficult people, engaged in circular conversations, struggling with the practicalities of everyday life. The work of contemplation perhaps lessens the duration between the the moments of insight or builds a vision that is always clear and well illuminated. Thus, every time the flame ignites, it can stay alive a little longer.
Quite often, then, contemplation is pictured not as some extraordinary or special experience but as a regular form of exercise or work, to engage in which is to cultivate the self in a quiet and systematic way - to engage in a process of alchemical experimentation that is hidden away in a workshop inside the head.
It's funny two things are at the center of my contemplations at the moment - one was described yesterday as cosmic co-incidence. It involves seeing Bill Nighy in London on Wednesday walking past the Royal Academy of art and my Son Tom having his photograph taken with him in a cafe in London on Saturday and posting it on face book. Cosmic co-incidence but what does it mean. Also I have been wondering about arts ability to collapse on itself and perhaps as it's lost a bit of confidence in post modernity late capitalist post structuralist structures it's lost it's confidence to collapse and in so doing much of it's ability to be of use. This made me think about "folding " the rest of it was just thinking but the folding came from the area of contemplation it was the space where the idea becomes spacial not a thing only of language. I think we give it different names and in a post -spiritual world we try and pin it down but perhaps we have to think of contemplation and art as a morbius strip something with two sides and a single surface so when we fold it in on itself it tends not to collapse. If I see Bill nighy today in Sheffield it will collapse.
ReplyDeleteBut there was no question of following. You were dragged down sooner or later whether you liked it nor not. A ripple appeared in the middle of the water, expanded in concentric rings and burst by a timeless force of power. Each line vanished into the reed-grass near the bank (Sillitoe 1958 206)
ReplyDeleteThe word they provided for me to fill in on this check blog thing was fishi
This reminds me of something I read in Kress about how 'knowing that' and 'knowing how' are enshrined in language:
ReplyDelete'In a debate, Germans can talk about ‘Wissen’ (‘knowing that’) and ‘Koennen’ (‘knowing how’): when the discussion moves to translating ‘knowledge’ from English to German (or Swedish) it is not straightforward to know which of these to choose. Or, another example: in English there are the two words ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’, verbs with an implied directionality of authority, in which ‘teachers’ have ‘knowledge’ and ‘learners’ have (or used to be assumed to have) the duty to acquire this knowledge. Vast theoretical and practical edifices and industries can and have been erected on such distinctions. Yet in many languages the same lexical root is used for this social domain: in German (as in Swedish) for instance, ‘lehren’ and ‘lernen’ are morphological inflections – ‘alterations’ – of the one lexemic stem – ‘learn’ in English. That makes it likely that German and Swedish societies might develop quite different theories around ‘Education’ to English society; and articulate them in their languages and their institutions. In each case it is the ‘accident of lexis’ – not of course an accident but the expression of a history of non-accidental social differences – which leads to such ontological wild goose chases.' (Kress 2010: 8)