Looking, direct looking/personal experiencing/participating, not thinking/abstraction is the action of consciousness itself. Science habituates one to the latter and can even inhibit/diminish/atrophy the former in an age that makes science just another orthodoxy..unless one recognizes that abstraction emerges out of consciousness not the other way around. Its why zen buddhist monks gaze at walls. They’re simply practicing looking and when you see something in the present moment its satori, and seeing whatever is in the next and the next and the next moment can become samadhi which is an ultimate state of thirdness greater oneness of the apparent duality of one’s consciousness and the rest of the cosmos. A state of total graceful flow if you will. This trinity is a kind of integrative cosmic code that the world’s major wisdom traditions (and I’m confident native ones as well) point at.

Steve Hummel 07/20/2026