431
of northern India, down below his alpine retreat, and no amount of his own personal
enlightenment, past, present, or awaiting him, can obviate the need for his
compassionate intervention.
It is the truth of his life, manifested in a choice, no less than what the young
Kierkegaard had posited beside the grave: the test of becoming something more
heartening, thoughtful and generous, than what he was. It is a journey worth taking,
we are to understand. But to elicit the strength in oneself that promotes embarkation
anytime soon is more than a mere chore: It changes one’s everyday life, which is
usually most uncomfortable, terrifying. One rarely hears or reads of terror or the
tremendous discomfort in the Buddha’s, or in Christ’s or Mahavira’s, choices. We
are the ones left to wonder what it must have been like for them.
The historian and scholar of East Asian art Helmut Brinker likens this moment of
anticipatory enlightenment—as commemorated throughout Zen monasteries in
Japan, in which meditation occurs for a week, images of the Shussan Shaka are
displayed, and hymns of the “Great Compassion” are recited—to an equivalent passion display by Christians during Easter, a distinct comparison with the Resurrection
of Christ.
6
Two Japanese scientists at Kyoto University have examined human eye contact
and assessed the factors involved in people not looking into one another’s eyes
while speaking, and/or processing data. It lends some insight to the conceptual
resolving powers of the Sakyamuni pictured throughout the Shussan Shaka genre—
and all landscape meditations—wherein either a protagonist pictured in the image
(e.g., the Buddha, an Arhat, or Boddhisatva disciple) or each and every one of us
contemplating such paintings, and in any historic or cultural period, is challenged to
focus. On what, precisely, are we narrowing our gaze, factoring the coefficients,
summing up the sensation, calculating the meaning, arranging contexts and fathoming a conclusion to the artistic, revelatory moment?
According to researchers S. Kajimura and M. Nomura, the brain appears to have
much more difficulty processing information when we are looking at something
intently (eye-to-eye contact with another person or animal) and speaking at the
same time, by as much as a 40% differential. This lends some weight to the famed
Ludwig Wittgenstein conclusion to his Tractatus (“… one must be silent”)
7
while
also suggesting a deep parallel reality to our ability—silently—to step into a painting and be transported there. The immutability of Zen revelation, as achieved by the
Shussan Shaka circumstances, are precise coordinates of this effortless effort: neural
coordinates for ecological liberation.
8
6 ibid., Brinker, p. 27.
7 The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein, With an Introduction by Bertrand
Russell, Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., New York and London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner
& Co., Ltd., 1922, p. 189.
8 See Cognition. 2016 Dec;157:352–357. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.10.002. Epub 2016 Oct
15, “When we cannot speak: Eye contact disrupts resources available to cognitive control processes during verb generation.” By S. Kajimura and M. Nomura, PMID: 27750156 DOI: https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.10.002, NCBI PubMed, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pubmed/27750156, Accessed April 30, 2020.
47.2 Gautama Buddha’s Enlightenment
of northern India, down below his alpine retreat, and no amount of his own personal
enlightenment, past, present, or awaiting him, can obviate the need for his
compassionate intervention.
It is the truth of his life, manifested in a choice, no less than what the young
Kierkegaard had posited beside the grave: the test of becoming something more
heartening, thoughtful and generous, than what he was. It is a journey worth taking,
we are to understand. But to elicit the strength in oneself that promotes embarkation
anytime soon is more than a mere chore: It changes one’s everyday life, which is
usually most uncomfortable, terrifying. One rarely hears or reads of terror or the
tremendous discomfort in the Buddha’s, or in Christ’s or Mahavira’s, choices. We
are the ones left to wonder what it must have been like for them.
The historian and scholar of East Asian art Helmut Brinker likens this moment of
anticipatory enlightenment—as commemorated throughout Zen monasteries in
Japan, in which meditation occurs for a week, images of the Shussan Shaka are
displayed, and hymns of the “Great Compassion” are recited—to an equivalent passion display by Christians during Easter, a distinct comparison with the Resurrection
of Christ.
6
Two Japanese scientists at Kyoto University have examined human eye contact
and assessed the factors involved in people not looking into one another’s eyes
while speaking, and/or processing data. It lends some insight to the conceptual
resolving powers of the Sakyamuni pictured throughout the Shussan Shaka genre—
and all landscape meditations—wherein either a protagonist pictured in the image
(e.g., the Buddha, an Arhat, or Boddhisatva disciple) or each and every one of us
contemplating such paintings, and in any historic or cultural period, is challenged to
focus. On what, precisely, are we narrowing our gaze, factoring the coefficients,
summing up the sensation, calculating the meaning, arranging contexts and fathoming a conclusion to the artistic, revelatory moment?
According to researchers S. Kajimura and M. Nomura, the brain appears to have
much more difficulty processing information when we are looking at something
intently (eye-to-eye contact with another person or animal) and speaking at the
same time, by as much as a 40% differential. This lends some weight to the famed
Ludwig Wittgenstein conclusion to his Tractatus (“… one must be silent”)
7
while
also suggesting a deep parallel reality to our ability—silently—to step into a painting and be transported there. The immutability of Zen revelation, as achieved by the
Shussan Shaka circumstances, are precise coordinates of this effortless effort: neural
coordinates for ecological liberation.
8
6 ibid., Brinker, p. 27.
7 The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein, With an Introduction by Bertrand
Russell, Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., New York and London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner
& Co., Ltd., 1922, p. 189.
8 See Cognition. 2016 Dec;157:352–357. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.10.002. Epub 2016 Oct
15, “When we cannot speak: Eye contact disrupts resources available to cognitive control processes during verb generation.” By S. Kajimura and M. Nomura, PMID: 27750156 DOI: https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.10.002, NCBI PubMed, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pubmed/27750156, Accessed April 30, 2020.
47.2 Gautama Buddha’s Enlightenment