So What?

Easiest Meditation? Rose or Motorcycle?

Image by joeldinda via Flickr

To the disciples who wanted to know what sort of meditation he practiced each morning in the garden the Master said, "When I look carefully, I see the rose bush in full bloom."

"Why would one have to look carefully to see the rose bush?" they asked.

"Lest one sees not the rose bush," said the Master, "but one's preconception of it."

(From: One Minute Wisdom, Anthony de Mello, page 138)

Following on from my last post, I suggest our ability to see the puppet and what it represents simultaneously is one example of the type of seeing in de Mello's story.  Another example can be seen in the quotation from Matthew Crawford's book I mentioned a few days ago.

So which is easier to see, a rose or a motorcycle?  Strangely it could be the motorcycle.  It may be difficult for the novice (and sometimes the experienced mechanic) to see the motorcycle as it is but there is direct feedback.  See the motorcycle properly and you can fix it or make it go faster.

See the rose bush and, well, you see the rose bush.

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Puppets and Projections

I thought I'd have another go at saying what I was trying to say last night.  When we see a puppet show we suspend our belief that the puppets are simulacre.  We can see they are puppets and yet we are disposed to see them as somehow real.  It is interesting to consider the conditions under which we are willing to do this.

So, I think with today's Dr Who we would be less tolerant of a visible puppet than we were with the classical series.  Even the famous Myrka "pantomime horse" in Warriors from the Deep (below) was somehow tolerable in a way even a subtle lapse would not be today.

Yesterday, I compared our relationship with puppets with the quantum mechanics idea of super-position.  Here something can be both a particle and a wave at the same time, for example.  We project onto the puppet our imaginary rendtition of the thing it represents and so see the (real) puppet and the (pretend) creature at the same time.

But of course, puppets are simply one clear example of what is a much more common experience.  Indeed we project our interpretations all the time.  The goal of any spiritual discipline is to see through our projections to the reality beneath.  How do we know we're seeing the reality beneath?  Well, that is of course what we have to learn. 

This is where the atheists get it wrong of course.  The goal of good religion is to see clearly.  It is not about believing loads of things that are self-evidently not true but seeing the truth behind what is delusional but appears true.

   

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Quantum Puppetry

Image via Wikipedia

August is traditionally the silly season and this year, before it settled down to more serious news, I was delighted to read that Paul Daniels had been hospitalised after Sooty had thrown a pizza at him.  I was not delighted Paul Daniels had been hospitalised, of course but the idea of a little yellow bear throwing a pizza struck me as hilarious and most people I have told this story to also find it hilarious.  Until of course they remember Sooty is a puppet and the pizza was actually thrown from someone's hand.

An article about puppets in today's Metro, about Handspring Puppet Company, is worth a read, the challenge is to make the puppet seem alive.  I read somewhere, and thought it was in this article but I can't find it there, that whereas an actor's role is to get the audience to suspend their disbelief, the challenge to the puppeteer is to get the audience to suspend its belief this is in fact a puppet.

This week's New Scientist's cover story Quantum Minds suggests that the human mind might be described by the same maths as quantum theory.  Note this is not the same as using quantum theory to explain human minds.  It does seem logical that the same maths might explain both, as the maths enables the mind to grasp quantum behaviour in the first place.

I think puppets might help.  One characteristic of quantum mechanics is super-position.  This is where we are asked to understand the behaviour of a particle as both a particle and a wave, two mutually contradictory things.

This is exactly what we all do with puppets.  If you don't believe me, watch this video about the puppets used in the stage play of Michael Morpurgo's 'The War Horse'.  We can see its a puppet and yet we're able to perceive it as if it is a real horse.

 

 

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