Kevin's Watch

How has what you consider 'deep' changed over time?
From my living room - "I mostly use it as an insult now"
I think as time has gone on the things that I used to think were simple appear deeper and many of the things I used to think were complicated turned out to be personal obfuscation around simple uncomfortable truths.

I like that, especially the last bit, but perhaps either everything is deep, or nothing is. Maybe it depends on how we define "deep."

If it's just "complexity" then certainly many things are more complex than they appear, but then, each of those elements may in itself be a fairly simple thing, and the complexity comes from trying to get them to work together?

--A

I meant however you might have defined it in your edgier youth hehe

Avatar is still an edgy youth.

Well, sadly no longer a youth...

I don't think I knew how to define it then either...but I would probably have considered solipsism "deep" and it really turned out to be more egotistical than anything else.

I still think quantum mechanics is deep, but I probably know even less about it now than I did then.

--A

There's personal choice in what you find to be deep and what you find to be simple. It all depends on how you relate to the subject.

Deep is a matter of how far you are willing to go.

Deep is an emotional response. Mozart doesn't do much for me. Bach is incredible. I could probably analyze Mozart and find great complexity. But I don't, because the music doesn't move me. Bach is deep because his great complexity moves me.

How has what you consider 'deep' changed over time?

It has deepened.

Any subject is only ever as deep as the mind considering it. Trust me - I know!



A case in point; take the works of Donaldson. On first coming to this site I was amazed to discover that what I had read just as fantastic stories that had enthralled me and gripped my imagination, were for other people allegorical novels outlining the internal battles we all face with the light and dark parts of our nature.

Yet for all that, I now find the arguments between theists and atheists shallow in respect to the bigger (to me) question of being. Where at one point I found Richard Dawkins a deep thinker, I now find him to be corralled into the same paddock as those whose thinking would have God as a white haired old man sitting up there in the sky. I meme for heaven's sake (did you get that? ), he used the Bible as an argument against the existence of God!

(Edit: I'm just about to return to the subject of beauty - a thing that on the face of it is shallow, but has depth and import in this world (and some say the power to actually save the world) over and above its on the face of it triviality.)

peter wrote: A case in point; take the works of Donaldson. On first coming to this site I was amazed to discover that what I had read just as fantastic stories that had enthralled me and gripped my imagination, were for other people allegorical novels outlining the internal battles we all face with the light and dark parts of our nature.

Yeah, I tend not to read much into stories...for me they're usually just stories.

--A

peter - as one explores the world, you discover places that are, at first, complex and perplexing and largely unknown, and love them for the excitement and mystery, but as you spend time there, you discover the inner rhythms and the hidden delights and the secret byways, and love them for their spirit and essence.

And it's the same when you travel to new locations as well.

peter wrote:I meme for heaven's sake (did you get that? )

*rimshot*

Dōgen wrote:Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.

--A

Fist and Faith wrote:

peter wrote:I meme for heaven's sake (did you get that? )

*rimshot*

Travel's a funny one for me. I never found it easy - I spent too much time nursing a gippy tummy to ever get much enlightenment (30 consecutive days on one occasion in Morocco!) But there were moments of complete calm; night in the Sahara, sunrise over the Ganges in Benares. But I did discover a few interesting things. Markets are the same everywhere - they form an unbroken line of continuity all the way from Cornwall to Katmandu. And cities have age that is palpable; think Cairo to Dubai, via Rome, Paris, London and New York. You feel it in the right place/order in each city you are in. Not exactly the deepest of insights, but interesting to experience.

Swimming pools! Now there's a thing that my consideration of what is deep has changed markedly. When I was a froglet, no pool was ever 'deep' - I was in them all; now if the water is six inches deeper than I stand I start to sweat (you can sweat under water you know).

Dōgen wrote:Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.

One of those guys said something like:
Before enlightenment, you put on your robe, you eat your rice, you sweep the floor. After enlightenment, you put on your robe, you eat your rice, you sweep the floor.

And as Shakespeare's Leonato said, ".... there never was yet a philosopher who could endure the toothache patiently....."




Though oddly, there is something in that sweeping the floor thing. I once heard one of these wise men say that, on starting a job (like the sweeping of the floor) he'd found it ok, by his hundredth time he disliked it, by his thousandth he hated it, but by his ten thousandth he loved it. Now as part of my job in the seven/eleven I finish my night sweeping and mopping the store. Sure enough, over the years my experience while so doing has changed, passing through much the stages as the man above records. I doubt I'm viewed as some kind of ochre robed sage by the denizens who frequent the type of place I work in at the nether ends of the shifts, nor am I sure that the transformations I have gone through can be described as 'enlightenment', but it's definitely changed....... like, "I'm in the zone Man!"

Perhaps it's the knowledge that sweeping the floor means you are done for the day. If it wasn't for the pandemic, I'd say you should look for a job in a pub...you would do better behind the bar than behind the shop counter I suspect.

The real thing to remember about "enlightenment" is that it's not...permanent may be the word I'm looking for here.

You have your revelation, your epiphany, and then as Fist's quote, the next day you are sweeping the floor again and it's very hard to hang onto that feeling. (Because it's an egotistical feeling anyway.)

The trick is to keep applying the lesson learnt over and over until you no longer need to think about it.

--A

Are those quotes about hanging onto feelings? I interpret them as saying, when you see the beauty and wonder in all things, things need to be nothing more than themselves to be beautiful and wonderous.

Yes - are they truly just saying that the mundane will re-establish itself shortly after the epiphany has occurred, or that the mundane will cease to be so, but will have evolved into something ......greater?

On the pub thing, oddly I've quite fancied being your smooth talking bar-steward at times; I rather see myself as a 'mixologist', dressed in bow-tie and half-tails shaking up cocktails for (and passing on contacts to high-end 'courtisans' to) my well heeled clientele. Alas, I don't have the 'bearing' for it really - I'm more your slack-jawed lumpen type, better suited to serve as a warning than as an example.

I dunno, I used to work in a pub with an old bloke, 60 if he was a day...leather waistcoat, the card suits tattooed across his knuckles, smooth is a matter of having the right attitude rather than the appearance.

As for the quotes, I think the point is both that in the throes of "enlightenment" the mundane may take on a greater significance in your eyes, despite still actually being mundane, but also, that being mundane does not preclude something also being wondrous.

A mountain does not need to be more than a mountain. And it is not. It is simply a mountain. But that does not mean it is not wonderful.

--A