Your first quote reminded me of this from Bruce Lee:
> Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.
Thanks for the quote, Bruce is a really admirable guy. May have been paying homage to another old Zen saying:
“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”
A hobby of mine is taking sayings like that and saying, "Well, if it weren't mumbo-jumbo, then what might it mean?" In this case, it would seem to be: At the start, you have a bunch of knowledge, concepts built on other concepts; studying Zen involves breaking all of that down and reforming it from scratch; at the end of the process, you have a new bunch of knowledge and concepts built on concepts, and you have similar labels for the concepts of material objects like mountains and waters, but it's possible that (e.g.) the lower-level concepts they're built on are different.
Physics is kind of like that as one develops successively better models of molecules, atoms, and particles, replacing the bottom-level concepts each time. Though the stuff on top of them doesn't change a huge amount every time.
If you are in flat land (a beginner), you see mountains as mountains. Well defined features on the horizon.
Once you start climbing, you concentrate on the details of the concrete mountain in front of you (rocks, moss, shrubs, ice, snow, caves) and your inner concept of a mountain changes into a collection of such details.
But once you summit, mountains around look like well defined features on the horizon again. Just like from the flat land of the beginners, only the perspective has changed.
At first, I saw things in the normal everyday way, with conceptual thought labels attached strongly to everything. Then, through Zen practice, I came to see things in a more direct way, without the constant presence of words and thoughts, and this was kind of amazing. Now, having thoroughly internalized this wordless perspective, I again use words with no problem, seemingly the same as anyone else, but with the freedom and playfulness that comes from the wordless perspective.
I think this is the one I can relate to the most. The 'wordless perspective' is a nice substitute for the common expression of 'you can only experience it and cannot express it'.
I love how “technical & analytical” your interpretation is.
My view: In the same vein but a different lens - enlightenment has a component where it is a “state of mind”/feeling(a kind of ah-ha)/a new perspective where ‘mountains are no longer mountains’.
But it’s also a cycle, one of living->death->rebirth->living where it’s through that process of “enlightenment“, the core and primary concepts and perspectives may have changed, but mountains are again mountains once everything known about mountains from before has been “re-integrated”.
Really? I'm flattered! To me it's just a simple description of what I'm guessing something might be supposed to refer to, but if it's sufficiently non-obvious to others...
Well, I haven't kept a list, but here's another that comes to mind. Someone's signature was "How do you prepare for death? Learn to live. How do you learn to live? Prepare for death."
On the face of it, this is a trollish non-answer. However, there is a way to interpret it. The first sentence is straightforward: Death is going to happen, how do I prepare for it? The second sentence is saying: You can't stop it, so the best you can do is figure out what to do with the life that you have. The third sentence is also straightforward: How do I figure out what to do with my life? The fourth sentence is saying: Imagine you're going to die, figure out your obligations that you'd want to fulfill before you die, fulfill them now, and then you will have freedom to focus on exploring what you really want to do. The phrases "prepare for death" and "learn to live" are each used twice, with different intended meanings each time.
There is always the possibility of getting a quote that is actually nonsense and was meant as nonsense (or, today, was generated by a computer), and "interpreting" wisdom into it that comes from the interpreter rather than from the quote. Or there could be multiple, similarly wise-seeming interpretations. For example, I could have interpreted the fourth sentence instead as: Imagine you're going to die; then, from that perspective, observe which things seem important and which no longer seem so important; thus, the thought-exercise of imagining you'll die is an exercise that teaches you how to live.
It's possible that cryptic sayings were devised to hold wisdom. It's also possible that they were devised by trolls surrounded by gullible admirers. Perhaps there were wise people who, as an apparently necessary evil, made themselves look cryptically impressive so as to attract funding from gullible rulers, or to keep their ideas from being misused by outsiders who might have bad intent. Perhaps there was a mixture of trolls and well-intentioned wise people. I really don't know.
I am generally a fan of straightforward textbook explanations that don't play word games, or, if they do, they have straightforward explanations of the word games. Still, it is possible that there's something to the cryptic stuff. And so it can be a fun game to try to get meaning from them.
Nice, I like that. It meshes with my own experience learning and internalizing various skills. If I'm interpreting it correctly, upon learning an art, each aspect of that art becomes a wide topic unto itself, to be picked apart and studied in detail. But in mastering an art, those lessons learned are internalized, and each aspect seen again as only its whole self.
> Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.