Photography, Phenomenology and Monastic Spirituality

Philosophy begins in wonder Plato tells us in one of the best definitions of philosophy ever given.  In the midst of learning or using all sorts of intimidating words like epistemology, axiology, metaphysics, a priori, a posteriori in philosophy, wonder is really what it is all about.

And wonder is what my work in photography is all about as well.  Wonder.  Being in awe; being curious; being open; being surprised.  The great twentieth-century Jewish mystic, Abraham Joshua Heschel, suggests that to die is no longer to be surprised.  It is sad how often I am not these things.  So often I simply do not see.  So often I am too busy, too pre-occupied with worries, goals, hopes, fears–the doctor’s appointment in two days, the paper that is already late, the concert tonight or this weekend, the lecture I need to tweak, how far behind I am on a project–that I miss seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, tasting what is right around me.  Alas, all too often, this is my ordinary, daily experience.

How can I step out of this ordinary way of experiencing the world?  How can I “see” more often?  Wonder?  Be in awe?  Be surprised?  Four avenues have been deeply influential for me: photography, the twentieth-century philosophical tradition known as phenomenology, what might be called the monastic tradition of spirituality, or the contemplative vision, and Zen Buddhism.  How can such disparate influences fit together?  Maybe they cannot, but let me briefly try.

In photography, I am constantly trying to capture something new, different, what I have not seen before in ways that I have never noticed–a different lens, a different angle, close-up, backing away.  Most anyone can “take a picture.”  I’m interested to reveal myself or unveil something about the “scene” in front of me or perhaps what is behind me that otherwise remains hidden; to think outside the box, to discover, to unveil, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.  If we are both taking a picture of something, it is not interesting for me to see if I can take the same picture as you.  Rather, I want to find something in it that interests me, that awakens curiosity, that is an “aha” or “oh, wow” moment.  All this by means of the angle of view, two dimensions, different lenses that isolate or connect pieces, the play of light and shadow, shapes, colors, looking more closely.  I am sure this is typical of most photographers.

Phenomenology is perhaps the most important and influential intellectual tradition of the twentieth century.  Its influence is profound and pervasive in philosophy, theology, the visual arts, architecture, music, literature, the “hard” sciences, psychology, sociology, and popular culture of film and theater.  Depending on the application, it can be blisteringly complex or exhilaratingly connected to the most ordinary of experiences in these widely varied disciplines.  Most existentialism is rooted in phenomenology–names like Heidegger, JP Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Paul Tillich.  What can I briefly say about this complex tradition that both illustrates some of its key insights and connects it to my journey of wonder and to my approach in photography?  Let me try by borrowing from Claudio Silvestrin, a contemporary artist and architect.  In an interview in Interior Worlds, The Year 2000, he talks about the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception as the deepest influence on his work.  Phenomenology is about learning to see through my eyes rather than through my thoughts.  In this sense, it gives priority to perception; it is seeing, feeling first, minimizing or bracketing the concepts (expectations, anticipations) that we all rather naturally bring to and impose on our perceptions.  Going back at least to Immanuel Kant, philosophers have increasingly focused on how our ideas, thoughts, expectations in profound ways “create” what we perceive, or “color” what we perceive like a lens.  Phenomenology is a systematic attempt to “bracket” or set aside these lenses that I contribute to my experience, so that, in Edmund Husserl’s rallying cry (the “founder” of this tradition), we can get “to the things themselves” in a much more rigorous induction of the data of perception.

Phenomenology, back to artist Silvestrin, is understanding the world first of all through my senses, and only then through language and thought.  At a very simple level, as children we all probably perceived clouds as the shape of a cat, a car, of Italy.  Each of those “thoughts” or “ideas” (cat, car, Italy) help me to perceive something new, but they also limit what I see.  With the “cat” lens on, as it were, I may not see the subtle shades of gray in the clouds, or perhaps the relative flatness or dimensionality of the clouds, or their closeness to me, and so on.  Language and thought are perhaps inevitable lenses affecting our perception, but what I perceive is very much directed by these lenses (both limited and enhanced) and becoming aware of this is important.  To put it differently, it is the process of becoming aware of hidden assumptions that shape my understanding of the world.

Another quick example: as a male, a white person, a heterosexual, a Christian—it is all too easy for these lenses to select what I see, what I experience, what I notice; for me to be blind, to be unaware of how these “privileges” literally shape or dictate (since they are the lenses through which I perceive the world around me) what I see, how I see it, what I claim is or is not real in my culture.  It is usually very difficult to become aware of these “lenses,” since they are typically unconscious, simply “absorbed” from the particular world that I generally think of as what is “real.”  So this is not just abstract philosophy but crucial to everyday life.  But I have also left wonder and photography behind!  Well, maybe not!

Phenomenology encourages me to question the preconceptions and assumptions I make.  In that sense, it very much is about learning to get outside the box.  Ideation is a term often used by phenomenologists to describe this questioning, trying to see things in new ways that allow us to see “more” of the thing as it is freed from our preconceived thoughts and expectations.  So much of my work in photography, seeing through reflections and distortions of various kinds, is precisely an exercise in phenomenological ideation.  Through these “distortions,” I vary the object I photograph as much as possible so as to free it from the thoughts I bring to the objects (a building, a car, a window–all lenses in the “shape” of concepts, ideas that limit what I am actually able to perceive).  In this way I am better able to see something that has always been in my field of perception but which I have been incapable of seeing before, given my assumptions, expectations, feelings.  Wonder and awe are often possible when I can take off or bracket these lenses and allow myself to perceive in new ways.

Wonder and awe are at the heart of my spiritual journey as well.  First some brief comments about monasticism or the contemplative vision and how it is very much connected to my photography.  By monasticism I do not mean what perhaps first comes to mind–monks, nuns, vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Awe is central to the religious life: “fear [better translated as “awe”] of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” the Psalmist tells us.  So much popular religion (that converts many and builds ever-larger buildings to house them all) seems to lack precisely this dimension of awe by being essentially instrumental.  It seems so egocentric, manipulative, implying that God is on my side, is there to bless me if I am doing the right thing and to punish me if not.  This seems to be utilitarianism, pure and simple.  The likes of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Nietzsche help me to be aware of this.  The great religious traditions at their best call this idolatry: making God in my image; limiting my understanding of God to my thoughts; having distorting lenses on again, of my making.  Such a God is too small.  What is missing?  Awe.  An antidote to all this flourished in the Christian tradition by the fourth-century and beyond.  Many, sometimes by the thousands, would remove themselves to the deserts of Egypt, Sinai and Palestine for a life of simplicity and prayer.  They are known as the Desert Mothers and Fathers, and are founders of Christian monasticism.  Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism all have their own versions of this rich tradition as well.  One of the better-known monks to popularize these insights in the twentieth century was Thomas Merton.  There is a gem of a book by a well-known Anglican, Esther de Waal, who has done much in her own right to popularize the Benedictine and Celtic traditions.  Titled A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton, it is an insightful integration of Merton’s ideas on monastic spirituality with photography, including some of Merton’s photographs.  How can I draw connections between monastic spirituality and what I am doing in my photography?

Merton reminds us that we live in the fullness of time.  He speaks of “the sacrament of the present moment.”  This monastic existential application of what is often a dry and remote doctrine of God’s omnipresence means that each moment is exactly God’s gift to me, is God’s good time.  This is to suggest that living in the present moment is a deeply spiritual act.  Seeing this moment as God’s gift is a way of affirming that the sights, sounds, tastes, touches, smells right now are sacred, unfiltered.  That is, they are to be taken with complete attentiveness.  How can that be?  In the present I look at you or I smell a flower.  I am not in some “sacred space”–a church, synagogue, mosque or temple.  I am not in some traditional posture—kneeling, standing, saying words that are readily identifiable as “prayer.”  I am not reading from what we commonly call a “sacred text” (like the Hebrew Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, etc.).  But to run from the present moment is, in these rich contemplative traditions, precisely to run from the Sacred, even if the thought is that I “should” be in church!  Merton suggests that prayer is not so much saying certain words that seem appropriate to worship, but primarily simply giving myself a chance to realize in silence that this present moment is sacrament, is icon, is God’s gift, is sacred.

Where is photography and phenomenology in all this?!  Well, if each moment is God’s gift to me, then in a real sense I reject God or miss the Sacred when I leave the present moment.  Alas, how often I do that!  If your attention span is like mine, I even suspect that you have left the present moment of reading all this gibberish many times in the last ten or fifteen minutes, wishing you were watching a movie instead of doing this, anticipating your date tomorrow night or dreaming of walking along a beautiful path in the mountains.  Isn’t this precisely what my little venture into phenomenology suggested, albeit in quite different language?  The discipline of letting go of the past and future is of course a letting go of thoughts—memories, anticipations—of yet other lenses.  The grand monastic traditions get me to a similar destination by framing it as a spiritual discipline.  Walking slowly, using all five senses in great detail; seeing leaves, stones, feeling the ground under my feet, listening to sounds at a distance and close by, listening to quiet sounds, to my breath; noticing even greater details–patterns, shapes, nuances of color, textures, shade and light–this is to be fully in the present; this is spirituality at its depth.  Merton’s admonition: “Try to stop thinking and simply to be.  Let everything drop away and instead try to be totally present to what is reaching you through your senses.” (de Waal, 18)  Hmmm.  This sounds like phenomenology to me!

Focusing on the present, whether in prayer, meditation, or photography, Merton provides a brief but important phenomenology in the form of this contemplative vision and why the present can be understood properly as spiritual, as a key element in worship and religion.  It is so easy for me to search for God or the holy in the magnificent mountain peaks or in the roar of the ocean.  Merton calls me to stop passing by without noticing the ordinary things.  This is even a suggestive way of understanding the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The traditional religious persons (the priest and Levite) miss seeing the wounded person beside the road because they have on a distorting lens (preconceived ideas) of where God is (in traditional sacred spaces, sacred texts, sacred words, sacred vocations) rather than right here, right now in the most ordinary and seemingly “secular” of places and activities, namely, a severely injured person.  Instead, let objects speak for themselves–bracket my expectations, my intentions, my understanding, my thoughts; take off my lenses.  If only I will be silent, attentive, observant:  the brick wall, the reflection, the broken twig, the geometry and rich color of the dandelion gone to seed, the shapes.  Let the object reveal what it will; let it unveil itself as I stay in the present, as I stop, as I open myself, as I am attentive.  This monastic vision understands life as sacramental, as icon; it sees more directly what is in front of me, and by lingering with it, allows it to unveil the sacred.  That requires letting go of (for phenomenology, bracketing) the worries, pressures, concerns, hopes, the thoughts about the future, past or even the present.  It takes time to be open to the object itself, to allow it to be in its own right rather than thinking of it as some instrumental extension of me or my projections (What can I do with it?  How can I use it?).  “The observed particulars take on the mystery of revelation,” Merton suggests.  It is not what I do that is important, but rather allowing the mystery to unfold with no personal agenda. (de Waal, 35)  I am to find the sacred right where I am, learning to be surprised, to see, feel, hear, touch, taste in wonder, in “spontaneous awe.” (de Waal, 79)

What I have suggested about photography, phenomenology and the monastic vision is that the camera really looks in two directions.  It unveils some object.  And it unveils the photographic skills, the mental assumptions or blinders (lenses), the capacity to find the holy in the present, in the ordinary that the photographer brings to the task.  The founder of Western monasticism is St. Benedict.  For him, life in the monastery takes the ordinary, the commonplace, and makes it a path to God.  In his Rule, monks are told to treat garden tools or pots and pans with the same care as the altar vessels: “He will regard all the utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar.”

Very briefly, let me suggest a fourth influence (and second religious influence) on my capacity to “see,” namely Zen Buddhism.  During January, 2000, I had the privilege, with a van-load of students, to spend a few days each in a number of monasteries in the San Francisco area.  One of our favorites was the Sonoma Mountain Zen Center.  In preparation we read a little book by the founder, Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.  An important way to understand this rich tradition is that the purpose of Zen teaching (the koans or enigmatic phrases so often used, like: “to hear the sound of one hand clapping”) is to make us wonder and to answer that wondering with the deepest expression of our own nature. (Suzuki, 13)  The point of practice is always to keep a beginner’s mind.  With constant practice of meditation it is easy to lose the limitless meaning of the beginner; it is easy to lose wonder.  As one develops an empty mind, the mind is ready for anything; it is open to everything. (Suzuki, 21)  The practice of zazen is all in an “effort” to understand reality simply as a direct experience; constantly letting go of thoughts, interpretations and meanings.  This brings us back again to “the primacy of perception.”  This has very practical implications.  In listening to someone, this Zen way gives up all preconceived ideas, all subjective opinions.  Instead, I just listen–“just do it.”  Easier said than done undoubtedly!  There is very little emphasis put on right and wrong, good or bad.  The “effort” is just to see things as they are with the other and to accept them.  This contrasts sharply with how I ordinarily listen, which amounts to hearing a kind of echo of myself.  Normally I are really listening to my own opinion while the other is speaking. (Suzuki, 87-88)  The phenomenological image of distorted lenses once again comes to mind in the many ways I color or project rather than simply perceive the other.  A frog sits or perceives just like you and me.  But it does notthink.  If something comes along to eat, it will simply snap it up and eat.  That is all. (Suzuki, 80)  Another example of Zen practice:   to cook is not just to prepare food for someone to eat.  In other words, it is not done with the lens of having a goal in mind for the activity.  It is to work with nothing in your mind, without expecting anything.  It is just to cook, to appreciate what we are doing in the moment, not a preparation for something else. (Suzuki, 53-54)

Put another way, right effort is to redirect our action from achievement to non-achievement.  When I am proud or frustrated with the results (say of a photo shoot), then my action is directed toward achievement.  I am no longer simply in the present moment.  My practice is not “pure,” which simply means that I am not experiencing “things as they are.” (Suzuki, 59-60)  Pure sensation, pure action–“just do it” sans an interfering lens–helps to eliminate self-centeredness.

While you are practicing zazen, you may hear the rain dropping from the roof in the dark.  Later, the wonderful mist will be coming through the big trees, and still later when people start to work, they will see the beautiful mountains.  But some people will be annoyed if they hear the rain when they are lying in their beds in the morning, because they do not know that later they will see the beautiful sun rising from the east.  If our mind is concentrated on ourselves we will have this kind of worry.  But if we accept ourselves as the embodiment of the truth . . . we will have no worry.  We will think, “Now it is raining, but we don’t know what will happen in the next moment.  By the time we go out it may be a beautiful day, or a stormy day.  Since we don’t know, let’s appreciate the sound of the rain now.”  [Or, with some of the photos here, let’s appreciate the sights of the rain now!]  This kind of attitude is the right attitude. . . . You will appreciate your surroundings, and you will appreciate yourself as a wonderful part of Buddha’s great activity, even in the midst of difficulties. (Suzuki, 117-18)

Once again, it is staying in the present, fully sensing what is present by taking off perhaps the most embedded lenses in our culture–doing what I am doing in the present for a reason, a consequence, an effect; a result; having goals, thinking in terms of the cost or benefit, calculating, planning.  All these are ways of filling the mind rather than emptying it.  All are ways of moving out of the present, of removing the possibility of awe, wonder, surprise.

I cannot resist one more reference, to the Zen Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh.  I refer to

his The Miracle of Mindfulness.  By mindfulness he means keeping my consciousness alive to the present reality as he puts it.  This can be done not only in zazen meditation, but in one’s daily life.  All of what I have said is drawn together beautifully in his image: the viewpoint, the bracketing of thoughts, the spirituality of the present moment.  His image is of walking along a dirt path to a village while practicing mindfulness.  This is done by having one thought in mind: “I’m walking along the path leading into the village.”  Fully alive in the present, regardless of whether it is sunny or raining, hot or cold, green or brown, it is possible for each step to be in “infinite wonder.”  The real miracle is not someone walking on water or in thin air.  The real miracle is to walk on earth: at one with a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the eyes of a child, a cityscape. (Nhat Hanh, 17-18)

So with Zen Buddhism we find yet another fascinating way to say what my approach to photography, phenomenology and Christian monasticism say.  Empty the mind.  Bracket.  Take off the distorting lenses.  Stay in the present moment and learn to see it infused with the holy.  See this ordinary moment as sacred.  See the extraordinary in the ordinary.  There are profound differences here, but I hope we can see an underlying confluence as well.