Hypnopompia strikes again. Yesterday I was mulling the idea of a Question focused on Time, as a complement to our recent adventure with Place, and hunting for a seed/pivot/point of focus. As I was awakening this morning, the phrase
object of contemplation
graced the mental horizon, towing in its wake a cascade of images and ideas. So here's the Question:
What might/would you choose as an Object of Contemplation to explore the essence of Time?
...not necessarily just ONE object —in fact, I have a vast phalanx of Objects that come to mind in re: Time, and the objective might be to explore a range of personally relevant Objects. Over the next few days I'll collect my own discoveries as I ruminate upon this Question, and add my findings below.
This iteration of the Question emerges from several current readings and doings, including Emergence Magazine's fifth annual issue, on Time; Marcia Bjornerud's Turning to Stone (Popova again, bless her, and Kathryn Schulz's New Yorker article on the book); my own efforts to wrap my mind around the writing of the 60th Class Report; the recent arrival of the Grateful Dead memoir A Long Strange Trip; and an ongoing effort to explore the Zeitgeist as it keeps coming at me.
In short, pretty much ANYthing can be an Object of Contemplation, and it seems that ALL "wisdom traditions" recognize Contemplation as an essential method, though they vary greatly in details and prosthetic practices. Just off the top of my head, here's the beginning of a list:
mantras, mudras and other gestures, memento mori, malas, rosaries, statues/'idols'/fetishes, objects in/from Nature, clocks and watches, imagined/visualized scenes... and in the contemporary reality, iPhones...
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A morning romp with google yielded a large and steaming heap of links to explore (YMMV, but each looked like it might Inform in some interesting way):
How marvelously various these takes on contemplation!
Contemplation stems from the Greek word theoria, which entails a type of seeing and 'knowing beyond words'... It involves marking out a space for observation, or holding an idea before the mind. These definitions point to a deliberate act of receptive inner observation and investigation, whether in respect of a specific object of contemplation or a more profound connection with the ground of our being... Contemplation is about self-realisation...
...In modern English, "contemplation" has retained its core meaning of deep, focused thought or meditation on a subject. However, its usage has broadened to encompass a range of contexts and situations. Today, contemplation can refer to a period of reflection and consideration, as well as being used in more specific religious or philosophical contexts, such as contemplative prayer or meditative practices.
...It is an ordered state of mind, a 'controlled consciousness', so to speak. It is something 'practiced' and performed by someone. In many ways, it is an exercising of certain qualities of the mind to create a different perception of the world and self awareness...
What is Contemplation?: An Interview with Claire Petitmengin in Journal of Contemplative Studies
...I understand contemplative practices through the surprising observation that a large part of our experience escapes us and that it is a source of suffering. This ignorance, avidya in Sanskrit, is the main source of suffering. How is it possible that we don't see what we experience? It's so close that we don't see it. And contemplative practices seem to agree on the fact that it is absorption or tension, the tension of our attention on objects or contents of experience, that prevents us from seeing and recognizing it. This absorption into objects or content conceals experience itself—what we experience here and now.
...For me, the activity of painting is a meditation on nature, a form of non-religious spiritual practice. The paintings themselves are meant to help the viewer stay centered and focused on the awe and wonder that is potentially available to all of us at every moment of our lives.
...Grassi taps into memories of spaces and objects that seem to be unfolding and animated yet are no longer used for their function. Files, folders, clunky computers, fax machines and office cubicles, objects traditionally associated with pink collar work, become charged with presence and memory.
the Chinese worldview found in the Confucian tradition tends to prioritise "becoming" over "being". Things in the world never achieve a state of stability. They are always seen to be in a state of transition and so they undergo constant change. This understanding is expressed in terms of yin-yang which serve as co-principles underlying the nature of reality....
...Meditation is considered a type of contemplative practice, but it typically involves concentration on a single thought, object or point. It opens the mind and develops the conditions that are ideal for contemplation, while contemplation itself takes the yogi even deeper to the eventual goal of pure knowing.
...Direct contemplation indicates observation, reflective contemplation, and awareness of our thoughts. We observe our own actions and thoughts, as well as external things, objects, and phenomena, without resorting to intellectual thinking and conventional knowledge to make judgments.
"In this way he abides contemplating the body/feelings/mind/dhammas internally, or he abides contemplating the body/feelings/mind/dhammas externally, or he abides contemplating the body/feelings mind/dhammas both internally and externally..."
...Some have called this practice Visio Divina, which is based on the term Lectio Divina. While the latter involves listening to scripture, the former involves reflection through images. Visio Divina is a recent term, but visual contemplation has long been a part of church history — whether it was through icons or stained glass...
...What comprises the contemplation of an art object? In looking at all the various things people do that fall under the rubric of contemplation we found that there are four nearly separate kinds of mental activities which they perform on an art object. Plainly stated, they look at it, they react to it, they think about it in a variety of contexts, and they make judgements about it. And much of the time they do these things in that sequence.
...In a making process we can hold in abeyance the automatic dominance of conceptual thought and develop a more receptive inner state, clearing a space in which we can open to Spirit. We can be illuminated, inspired and moved by our sense of and alignment with the Presence of Spirit.
I recognize that part of the appeal of the prehistoric world—as opposed to nature in its extant state—was its foreignness, its near-total separation from the domain of Homo sapiens. My obsession with trilobites, saber-tooths, and megalodons was what Berry might call a "dehumanized" one. The world of the dinosaurs captivated me precisely because it was simultaneously real and unlike anything I could ever experience in my lifetime. Its "otherness" made it an object of interest and a source of comfort.
...What is moving and reassuring about nature's "otherness?" One possibility is that because animals, plants, and their environments exist independently of humans and their decisions, contemplation of them offers relief from the burden of self-consciousness and intentionality. The ability to reason and reflect on one's own behavior is a great gift; it is what makes us human. But it can also be exhausting.
I think touchstone may be a necessary bit of lexicon to link to Objects of Contemplation. We considered 'touchstone' sometime in 2020 (and see my notes from that time, which rings many useful Changes). Some of my touchstones are actual stones; others are books. The essence of a touchstone's Power is an expression of its Object of Contemplation identity.
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And so let us pass on to consideration of the riddles of Time, writ large and small.
there's the Cosmic Time we've become used to seeing images of via the various telescopes (awe > understanding)
and the Siderial Time that appears in Hindu cosmology
and Terrestrial Time that includes the tectonic and cataclysmic, and contains rocks and plants and animals and our own very very selves
and Historical Time, about which we tell ourselves stories with human focus
and there's the Generational and Demographic Time of families
and the Time of our own individual lifetimes, which have passed through a succession of societal Zeitgeists
and after that it's this happened and that happened in the Solar Time of seasons and days and hours, measured and marshalled by clocks
and then the Time of things too fast to be seen, and of things too small to be seen (against which we've made 500 years of technological progress)
and so eventually to Quantum Time, which nobody understands...
All of those have, potentially, Objects of Contemplation to focus attention upon, with the objective of grokking: "...to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with" (or even to merge with, by extension).
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So what about Zeitgeist? I can't remember when I first encountered the concept, or how I came to understand its socio-cultural subtleties. Literally it's 'time-spirit', usually used as 'Spirit of the Age', and attributed to Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)
...an invisible agent, force or daemon dominating the characteristics of a given epoch...
...a calque of genius saeculi commonly attributed to Herder... (wiktionary.org) (and parallel to 'genius loci'
...describes the prevailing trends, moods, attitudes and cultural climate of a particular era or moment. It captures the essence of a specific time, reflecting the collective mindset and values of society during that period...
The concept of Zeitgeist describes an at once animating and permeating social force. It originates around the turn of the seventeenth century but was conceptually re-deployed in the late eighteenth century, so it can now appear as if the term we use today emerged in the ambit of the French Revolution. This is reinforced by the fact that in German the word Zeitgeist was at this time beginning to oust other forms denoting this concept, such as"Geist der Zeit(en)" [spirit of the time(s)] or"Genius des Zeitalters/der Zeit" [genius of the age/of time], and has remained current ever since... (from Zeitgeist - How Ideas Travel Maike Oergel 2019)
...Three examples, which are somewhat removed from the more charged debates concerning labels for the contemporary moment, can illustrate the questions that the term uniquely raises: The culture of the baroque, the discovery of the unconscious, and the phenomenon of "1968" are candidates for cases of period-specific cultural patterns...
In mid-July there was a What to read next? Question, sparked by a New Yorker "100 Best of 21st Century" list. It seems appropriate to extend that back into the 20th Century to consider some books that now seem to me to have been personal Objects of Contemplation in that I now see that each was transformative by making me aware of something fundamental. I know that there would be greater depths to plumb with another encounter with each of them (and I've returned to many of them repeatedly). I'm sure other titles of similar centrality will occur to me, but here's the current list, in more or less chronological order:
Lord of the Rings (the first Epic I read)
The Ugly American (fundamental cross-cultural notions)
Stranger in a Strange Land (the concept of 'grok')
The Photographer's Eye (photographs to study)
Diet For a Small Planet (complementary protein)
The Whole Earth Catalog (Access to Tools)
Stand On Zanzibar (multimodal narration)
Zen Mind Beginner's Mind
Sand County Almanac
Gödel Escher Bach
Neuromancer (cyberspace)
Chaos (fractals)
Maus
The Great Derangement (beyond Euro-American focus)
Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene
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A modest gallery of Objects of Contemplation in respect of Time
Clark Gable 1938
High-speed cameras have captured in vivid detail how springtails flip themselves into the air, showing that they spin faster than any animal ever recorded.
Springtails, a type of arthropod in a group related to insects, are millimetres long and found in most places on Earth.
True to their name, the animals use a tail-like appendage called a furca, which folds beneath their bodies, to spring off the ground. The furca unfolds in a flash to catapult the creatures into the air, allowing them to evade predators...
Each jump flung the minuscule acrobats up to 80 body lengths away on an arcing, backward trajectory. The rate of springtails’ spinning surpassed all other animals that have been studied — up to 368 rotations per second.
Smith and Harrison saw that springtails had two ways of landing: an uncontrolled bounce and tumble or an anchored stop made possible by an organ called a collophore, a sticky tube that can attach to the ground.
The scientists are continuing to explore the mechanics of springtail leaps for engineering inspiration. They are also studying the forward flips of plant lice, another arthropod that has evolved rapid escape jumps.
