Final Post

To be really present moment-to-moment is to be completely open to every aspect of the human experience in real time. That is to say, one must experience the world continually and sequentially without being interrupted by an overly active mind. Most of the time, the world provides a stimulus which we receive through our senses before processing it in our mind and deciding upon an appropriate reaction. To be truly present, however, one must eliminate the middle-man we call the mind so that our our bodies may experience the world more openly, honestly and truthfully. In this way our bodies are capable of producing more genuine reactions to the world which we experience.

This is not to say that being truly present moment-to-moment results in unconscious action free of thought or sentiment. On the contrary, one who is truly present may react perfectly consciously, or, as the case may be, he might not react at all. To use a crude analogy, take for example the scenario of two people of different languages communicating through the help of an interpretor.

A French man may say to an English woman, “Ma cherie, je t'aime... Tu me manquais comme tu ne peuvrais jamais savoir.” An interpretor may then say to the English woman, “He said 'my dear, I like you... you have been missed by me like you would never be able to know.” Indeed this would be an accurate translation, but, like any translation, it would be imperfect and could never express the emotion or the true meaning of what was said.

In this way, the interpretor is like a mind who is not entirely present. It interprets an outside stimulus and tries to make sense of it without really being open to it. This English woman, upon hearing these interpreted words, may feel compelled to react a way that she deems fit. Perhaps she will reply simply that she has missed the man in return, not knowing that he was attempting to articulate his undying love for her.

Now take this same scenario but have the interpretor take a few steps back. We are left with a French man spilling his emotions to a woman who cannot understand a word he says. But if she stops trying to translate his words, if she observes him openly, taking in his tone, his body language, the look in his eyes, the way his mouth moves around each word as it is spoken, she may well receive a much more accurate impression of his intention. This time, in response, she may take him by the hand and give him a light kiss on the cheek, or quite possible, she may choose not to react at all. Either way, she will have given a much more honest response than would have been possible with an interpreter. Moreover, this response would not be solicited unconsciously by a false impression. Rather it would be a conscious decision based on an open observation. And best of all, the interpretor, rather than translating, would be free to look on and smile as two people share a moment of connected reality.

It is so with the mind. If one can prevent the mind from interpreting the world around him, one may actually be able to produce genuine reactions to his surroundings. The trick, as one might assume, it not to remove the mind from the equation entirely, but rather to open the mind like a channel through which the world can flow smoothly. Then instead of struggling to control the stream, one can gaze down upon the flowing river of experience and come to truly know its currents.

However, a person in modern society would not get very far if he sat around watching rivers all day. Most of us have jobs, schools or vocations to attend to and cannot afford spend all of our time observation. But as more and more people discover every day, if one works frantically for too long, he will lose that valuable perspective on his work that observation has afforded him. What's more, if one were to observe for too long he might find that he no longer has a task for the observation to inform upon. This is why so many people today are turning to a form of daily practice to with which to inform their lives.

This daily practice may be something as simple as taking an evening walk after dinner, knitting on the subway, drinking a cup of tea, or even sitting on the porch and watching the sunset. Though most people would not refer to their actions as daily practices, each habit provides that particular person an opportunity to observe the world he inhabits and to contemplate on his own situation in that world. In short, each person finds his own way of being present in the world.

There is a growing trend of this so called “presentness” especially in the art world. Many artists today speak of their work as being non-representational or non-symbolic. What they mean to say is that their work is not an abstract of an idea and it is not a crude representation of a physical object. Each work is an object unto itself. Each work is its own being. Richard Serra actually said that his “enormous steel structures are not imitations of natural forms. They are giant pieces of steel that exist In the real world. I don't want them to look like anything people could have experienced before.” Each piece has a life of it's own and should be experienced as such. This is a trend that many choose to call “postmodernism.” I remember in 10th grade I had an art teacher who used to wear enormous earrings cut in the shape of words. Each one was large, pink, and shiny, and spelled two words: “POST MODERN.” I thought these earring were incredible clever because they reversed common misconception about art. These earring were not saying, as many would suspect, that “We are what we are because we say we are.” Instead they are saying, “We say what we are because that is what we are.”

But just as I would argue that many people misunderstand Postmodernism, I would also argue that many people misunderstand the idea of a contemplative aesthetic. Contemplation, at least in the way I'm relating it to presentness, does not really have an aesthetic in the same way that postmodernism does not really have an aesthetic. This is largely due to the fact that the quality of awareness to the present is not contingent upon the quality of present itself. A buddhist monk is able to meditate just as easily in a business suit as he is an an orange robe as I'm sure you are able to contemplate a busy room just as effectively as you can contemplate an empty room. The difference, one might argue, is that one provides tranquility while the other provides distraction. However, this change in environment is really only effecting one's ease of concentration which is hugely different than one's quality of contemplation. While the “Contemplative aesthetic” or “Zen Aesthetic” may be calming to some it is still an environment which that person will have to experience openly. The only real difference between the Zen Aesthetic and a busier more western aesthetic is that one is stripped of important landmarks with which to gauge one's self. Besides, some people may find it infinitely easier to concentrate in the busy streets of manhattan than in a softly-lit blue-green room with tatami mats on the floor and incense burning in the corner. It all depends upon how the person thinks, where he was brought up, and what surroundings he prefers. In short, I believe that quality of contemplation, and subsequently awareness, lies not in the aesthetic but in the perception of said aesthetic, whatever it may be.

That being said, I think that there is a quality shared by those who tend to be better at observing. This quality is impossible to name though it is recognizable at glance, and one can always detect it, no matter what form it takes. One can easily look at a Van Gogh painting and recognize that he had substantial powers of observation. And although one may say that his paintings are not as photographically accurate as another's may be, one can still detect the honestly in its form. And then, if one were to walk to another room in the museum, one could look at a Jackson Pollock painting an know instantly that, although his aesthetic is vastly different that Van Gogh, he still possessed an undeniable ability to observe and perhaps an even greater ability to be aware of the present. I think this quality that is shared by all great artists, that thing we talk about when we say “that man's got it!” has a lot to do with contemplative practice. I don't mean that Van Gogh meditated a lot, or went for walks every night after dinner. I mean that whatever he did, he did it a lot, and he did it well. Just as a buddhist monk may come to a certain revelation after 10,000 hours of meditation, perhaps a painter can achieve perfection after he has completed 10,000 pictures. Perhaps anything, as long as it is done well, can lead to that heightened level of awareness or contemplation. If this is true I think that contemplative practice is crucial to the creative process, even if one is unaware he is doing it.

Very often I think art critics try to refer to the afore-mentioned unnamable quality as universality. This means that most people in the world can relate to the piece so it must be great. The more people who can understand it the better, right? Yes, perhaps. But how does one reach universality and how does one detect it? The answer may very well be contemplation. It makes sense does it not, that a man who has painted landscapes for 50 years may be better than a man who has only panted for one. I also makes sense, does it not, that we as an audience would be able to detect that because we see landscapes every day and have seen them all our lives. However, though we all exist in the same world, it may also be true that some of us pay more attention to the landscape while others may pay more attention tho the people in it or the buildings upon it. Would not the more landscape-minded people be better at both painting and recognizing landscapes? Would they not have contemplate landscapes for longer than others had? It is true that even the most uncultured swine can recognize a bad painting when he sees one. Even a pauper can see that the painter has misrepresented the human form even if he can not describe exactly how he knows. This I believe, is largely due to the fact that our minds are getting in the way of our perceptions. On both the part of the artist and the observer, the mind is clouding the honesty of the world. but if the artist really spent time with his subject and really contemplated the human form, perhaps he would be able to render it more faithfully. And similarly if the observer had spent more time contemplating the human figure he too would more easily be able to point out the flaws in the artist's work. If an artist is open enough and truly present in the moment, then even the most unaware of observers should be able to look at the piece and say “that man's got it!” Of course the art critic would say, “he has achieved universality!”

Of course contemplation improves the quality of communication. It's as simple as the old adage, “Think before you speak.” However it is careful to note that contemplation only improves the quality of anything by increasing one's awareness of that thing. I doubt that all talented musicians or even athletes contemplate very much before a performance. I think that some people just have a knack for immersing themselves in the moment. Of course, this ability is probably achieved by constant practice and repetition, though not necessarily formal contemplation. To quote someone who may or may not have been very contemplative, “Practice makes perfect.” What else is there to say?