Things are more than what they seem (Diaz)

 



"Although there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water." (p31)


I remember loving 3D images as a kid. I had several posters and hung them on my bedroom walls as I spent a lot of time in my room brooding about my unfair life as a teenager in the 90's. I had so much difficulty with them in the beginning. All I could see was what looked like someone had spilled the paint pallet on the canvas, thought it looked psychedelic and discovered they could make a fortune selling the images in books and as posters to unassuming children. 

Others tried to tell me how to be successful at viewing the image. They told me to stand so many feet away from it and just relax my sight. Look beyond the image, they would say. Or, look to the left or to the right, don't look directly at it was their advice. I had no idea what they meant. All I could see was wacky paint. I had to try it my own way.

All at once, it happened! 

I was most successful with the technique where you hold the image right up on to your nose and keep your gaze straight out as if looking past the image to a wall you know is out ahead of you. Slowly draw the image away from your face but be careful not to look directly at the poster or you will miss your window of opportunity. Keep imagining yourself looking at the wall and pretend the poster is a window screen between you and the wall. I suddenly got a little dizzy as I felt I was entering the twilight zone. Remember that opening scene, or was it the closing image, of the spiral going round and round? Kind of like that! An image would seem to jump out at me and I felt like I was in a kind of tube. I would try to look around inside the 3D image but would quickly lose it and be staring at the flat poster again. After a lot of practice, I got really good at being able to explore the image from different angles and could look at it for long periods of time. Playing. Exploring. Wondering what was behind a tree or a bush. Wondering if there was more there than what I could see in that moment or what I had seen before. After all, it had ALL been hidden to me at one time. 

Being able to explore the image from different angles and move around in the image, discovering new things each time, is like what Dogen says to us about perspective. We think we see and understand the world around us because we are taking it all in and appreciating it. But he says there is so much more. Although the oceans and mountains have squares and circles that we can see, there is infinitely more to them, entire worlds more! 

It is so right beneath our feet, he reminds. It's not just other things, or other people in the world that we can look outward at and discover their hidden beauty. We can look down at our feet, right where we are in any given moment, and find hidden beauty. No matter the ugliness of our situation or orientation in any given moment, if we can muster enough courage to stay in that moment, instead of walking away and avoiding the frustration, the ugliness we see or feel, we can perhaps alter our perspective and see beauty pop out where we only saw flat chaos to begin with. Look through the painted rice cake, so to speak, and connect with a myriad of things awaiting discovery.


Copy and paste this link to play with more 3D images and see how you fare on the quiz!

https://www.buzzfeed.com/agh/tk-hidden-illusions-thatll-make-your-brain-hurt


The image above has this 3D image within it:

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshApril 17, 2021 at 8:59 PM

    I never had much luck with these, although with other kings of optical illusions I'm really quick. Is the "eye of practice" then "what you've trained or been habituated to see," or something more? -- an eye that has been emancipated by, say, meditation, and that can "just see"?

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  2. kjhApril 18, 2021 at 1:33 PM

    It is amazing to discover that we can be/can need to be "taught" to see anew, isn't it? It reminds me of an ayengar yoga retreat I found myself (not particularly experienced in ayengar, surrounded by teachers of 10+ yrs) participating in, in Belur, India, BKS Iyengar's home village. We'd practice yoga for the majority of the day, but ayengar is a very deliberate, slow practice focused on alignment and holding poses deeply and correctly (more so than the "flow" of other yoga practices). One time we held tadasana (a simple standing pose, also known as mountain pose) for a considerable time (20+ min) with our eyes closed. I grew so attuned to the slightest swaying of balance, the way the pressure was distributed across my toes, the balls of my feet, my heals... it made me feel as though I'd never before understood what it was to stand! And how silly, because, of course, we've all been standing since we were infants. But I think what you explore here is the way we can return to an activity we take for granted as "known" or "familiar" and suddenly, the activity appears to us anew, with new edges or elements we hadn't before thought to be attentive to.

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