On Meditation

Just a quick note: I have no idea what this is or what forms they’re going to take. This one is very fragmentary, but others will be more conventional. Thanks for reading, I really appreciated the small responses I got from the last one. I hope everyone is doing ok out there and maybe these can be some welcome distractions.

Socrates:

Why, take the case of Thales - while he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a Thracian servant girl jeered at him because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet. The same jest applies to all who pass their lives in philosophy.

-Plato, Thaetetus

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These essays are aspiring towards true thoughts honestly expressed. I want to try an alternative to the accepted practice that essays should lay out clear arguments, driving towards some justified conclusion, syllogisms flavored with anecdotes.

The ascent to knowledge is filled with warps and discontinuities, the way up is the way down, long simmerings precede sudden enlightenment. No thoughts are the same, all resemble each other. A misunderstood argument from years ago may prove our salvation.

When we reach the top, why pretend we got there by a ladder? I won’t retrace thought, but I will attempt to stimulate it, direct it towards the end I have come to believe in.

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Some topics can consume the entire mind, focusing all energies towards some definite summit. There are many words for this, but one possibility is “meditation.” Meditor in Latin is simply to think, plan, contemplate, etc. and has plenty of uses in the Classical canon, extending its branches into Christian Late Antiquity.

The word acquires its more religious connotation from the monastic practice of Lectio Divina. In the 12th century, the Carthusian monk Guigo separated sacred reading into four ascending stages. Reading was only the first step, to understand the literal meaning in the narration of what happened. The next stage was to take some verse or phrase and with enough work and grace come to understand it as the word of God. The practitioner would repeat the words, turning them over again and again amidst the silence of the mind’s cell, letting the sounds and meanings of the Word consume the whole spirit. This second stage is called Meditatio.

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I won’t forget when I was initiated into the new universe of proof-based mathematics by my 8th grade Geometry teacher. Everything we knew of math were rule-following exercises, sitting down at a desk and avoiding the mistakes on a straight path through parenthesized addition and division. Now we would be doing proofs, which could not be done on a desk alone. We would have to take showers, go for walks, think for days on end, waiting patiently for the next illumination to occur. There is no known method for coming up with the right proof, only strategies for welcoming insight.

More advanced initiates affirm this. Einstein never missed his daily walks, Erdos did Speed, Poincare lay in bed dreaming. Anything to travel in the planes where proofs can occur.

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The Marquis D’Hervey de Saint-Denys, a French aristocrat and Sinologist, carefully recorded his dreams and sought to direct them. One day, he thought continually about his dream from the previous night in all its aspects, and how he wished somehow to return there. The next night, he found himself in this same dream, able to continue as he wished. Nightly visions arise from the preoccupations of the day.

Mendelev had been carefully categorizing and arranging the various chemical elements, and began to suspect they could be organized. He dreamed the periodic table where they all fell into place. Ramanujan dreamed of his family goddess unveiling scrolls which contained the proofs he recorded in the morning.

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Flaubert, the hermit of Croisset, pledged himself to style. He stayed in his study puzzling over every word and phrase, in the absolute search for “le mot juste.” He gave up friends, pleasures, and publications for the sake of achieving a book where “sentences stir like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.” He wrote for hours without ever setting the pen to the paper. In the rare moments of leisure when he would stroll along the river with a friend, he would shout his forming sentences at the top of his lungs, to test their sound in the open air.

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Neo-Confucianism inherited a China enchanted by the altered states of Daoism and formless attention of Chan Buddhism. Zhu Xi returned his students to the moral self-cultivation of Confucius by insisting on the careful study of the great classics of the canon, a canon chosen by Zhu Xi, and the canon which has stayed in that form for 800 years. Zhu Xi introduced the practice of 靜坐 (Jing Zuo, quiet sitting), a practice where the student would come to be in harmony with 理 (Li), the supreme principle of reason. Through this, they could investigate the matters at hand, grip reality, and translate the principles of the texts into the concrete actions demanded by Heaven.

Centuries later, Yi Hwang of the Joseon dynasty translated Master Zhu’s instructions into the Ten Diagrams of Sage Learning. He guides the student through the ideal day of a retired scholar. First one must tame the rushing thoughts of the morning, reflect on past faults, and confirm new paths. After brushing teeth, donning the appropriate cap and robe, and inwardly mirroring the light of the rising sun, open the books and enter the presence of the ancient master. Confucius is seated, Yan Hui, and Tseng Tzu at his side. Attend to the words of the master, going over and reconsidering the questions and discussions of the disciples. When some matter arises, respond to it, search for the clear mandate shining forth. With the time left over from reading, take a swim.

The journal of Wu Yubi of the Ming Dynasty contains his strivings and failures to live up to the way. His calm is disturbed by painful boils, he gets angry over disputes with his neighbor, and he is filled with regret. In a dream, he sees Zhu Xi, and makes signs of his deep respect for him.

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The Feynman Algorithm:

1. Write down the problem.

2. Think real hard.

3. Write down the solution.

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“One reason I like gardening,” Terry Riley said, “is that I get a lot of ideas when I’m watering plants or pulling weeds. Musical ideas start going through my head, I’ll be hearing things, and sometimes I’ll have to run into the house and write it down.”

“I’m very connected to lizards and animal and plant life. I feel like I learn thorough their motions. A lizard will get on a rock and do something, and I’ll think, ‘There’s music there!’”

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Aristotle concludes his discussion of ethics, how to practice the virtues out in the world and attain the golden mean, with the argument that the highest happiness is to be found in the philosopher. To engage the mind in the perception of divine truth, like Thales looking up at the stars, is the closest man can come to divinity.

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This is what I want for myself. To see a proof in face of a cliff, to solve the problem of a poem’s rhyme helped by the sound of passing wind, to dream a bewitching melody. To be always looking for the hidden face of reality.

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Guigo’s system includes two further stages, Oratio, and Contemplatio, which complete the ascent to the one God. Meditation on these specific things are not enough, they are part of the ladder to the oneness of the absolute. Zhu Xi’s meditation was an attempt to make these sitting practices borrowed from Buddhism more grounded in daily life, and the Chan monks would continue to insist that this was unnecessary. In Aristotle’s Happiness, Thales is not thinking about what he is learning, he is grasping what he already knows. Searching for the truth is only part of it.