Yesterday I mentioned that I had found it natural to extend the practice of relating to appearance as ‘light-manifestation’ to the other senses. I had the sense that this was a bit extreme. But this morning I read something interesting in an essay by the twentieth century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas that supports it. He writes:
The sphere of intelligibility—of the meaningful—in which everyday life . . . maintains itself, is characterized by vision. The structure of a seeing having the seen for its object or theme—the so-called intentional structure—is found in all the modes of sensibility having access to things.
The point is this. Our usual seeing and knowing depend on the structure of self and world, subject and object. And the act of seeing is the model that expresses this most directly. But if we practice ‘taking in’ what we see as ‘light manifestation’ (we might say, If we practice seeing ‘lightly’), this structure loses some of its weightiness. The seer, the seeing, and the seen are given together in an evocative way. And this same ‘lightness’ applies to the other senses, including thoughts, etc.
Jack