WALKING MEDITATION
I began meditating three or four years ago without expectations, and many insights and lots of peaceful time were a part of that process. In particular I began "walking meditation" (which when I first heard of it I supposed meant devotees walking together around a space with eyes closed, but no it waasn't like that). The walking meditation is a walk: it can be long or short, here or there, slow or not. I'd walked for years around my small town, which is furnished with hills of various steepness, roads that pass beneath elder trees and past dwellings and meadows. In all that walking, though, I rarely if ever noticed a phenomenon that I now enjoy, and that is a constant in my "practice" if that's what I do.
It's the way that trees, especially in groups and in full leaf, seem to slide aside as you pass them and reveal the group beyond, only to close again when the road takes a turn the other way. It's the commonest thing in the world of binocular vision, and yet it seemed I'd never clearly perceived it, and certainly hadn't ever studied or observed it. It seemed to me, as the trees slid forward or away, to resemble the scrims of an old fashioned stage set, which also were drawn aside like curtains as the actors walked through as though into a deeper space. (The other things the experience resembles, obviously, is the backgrounds in old animated cartoons made with a multi-plane camera: characters are made to walk from screen left to screen right, or walk without proceeding, while trees and other things pass by them; trees and buildings farther off move more slowly, giving the illusion that I experience: that the trees move away from me or close in, arranging and rearranging themselves as pass or move on a single track.
I don't know enough of the higher modes of meditation to know if this illusion is noted in the practice; I do understand that all things are in motion and have being -- spiritus intus alit as Virgil says -- and the passing-through me of all that I see and feel and hear as I walk are the stuff of leatnong and changing. That's all I know, if I know anything.
The phenomenon you describe was famously captured (in a shaky way, but still...) by the Disney Studio in making one of the final cuts of Fantasia. After the demon Chernobog ("God of Darkness") is driven away by the bells of a monastery, we see a line of monks processing through the growing light to the accompaniment of Schubert's "Ave Maria." One long, long cut shows them moving straight toward the vanishing point of the frame, as the trees grow in size, then part like curtains in front of the line of holy men, as you describe.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting part is that this was the longest single shot using animation to that moment, and it required a whole soundstage filled with illustrated panels, some painted on glass to enhance the effect of growing light. It took several days to manipulate all these panels correctly, and in the middle of the take, there was an earthquake severe enough to jiggle and rearrange all these moving parts. There was no way to restore them to where they'd been when the previous frame was taken, so the footage was discarded and the animators/camera crew went back to the beginning.
The finished footage, mated to its high-fidelity Fantasound track, was delivered to the Broadway Theatre in New York just four hours before its premiere. And your trees do it without a flinch or token of effort.
Thanks so much for this story, and its specificity. Yes, of course, the Ave Maria, my favorite scene in my favorite movie (of 1956, getting it late in the local theater after glimpses of it on B&W "Walt Disney World" or whatever it was called.) JC
DeleteUrsula Le Guin's story "Direction of the road" takes on a similar phenomenon -- the way far-away things grow larger and larger as you approach them -- literally and from the perspective of a tree.
ReplyDeleteHi John
ReplyDeleteIt sounds to me like you’ve become aware of motion parallax. Whether you’re aware of it our not, it may not merely help you to navigate around your neighbourhood during your walking meditations, it may be your primary visual cue for avoiding collisions. As part of my job, I had to think about this for a few weeks last summer. To help me think about it, I played around with virtually corrugated surfaces like this one. www.staff.city.ac.uk/~solomon/structure.avi . For better or worse, I haven’t thought about motion parallax since then. You could say I’ve been side-tracked.
"Motion parallax" is exactly right. The only thing it doesn't cover is the will of the trees to line up as they choose. (ANd my will to perceive.)
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