Landscape exists by virtue of the perceiving beholder. An avid runner myself, I will explore the interaction between landscape and the runner.
And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. (Plato)
For Plato, the ever changing and dim place we call "reality" is a place filled with decay, disintegration and deceit. There is quite a difference between what we think reality is and what reality really is, says Plato. The world as we experience it, is to Plato simply a product of the human imagination. And to make matters even worse, we see this deceitful world around us through a veil of self-serving fantasies and delusions.
For example: last year, I achieved a rather dismal result at the Vancouver International Marathon, and the only award bestowed on me was a blow to my runners-ego. Immediately afterward, I was at the New Westminster racetracks doing speed work, laboring vigorously toward a goal no longer within my reach. Yet I was happily maintaining the egocentric fallacy that it would still be possible to alter my now rather humble results. After many training sessions, which yielded rather limited progress, I did some soul-searching and gave in to the truth: I was getting older and time had irreversibly cut down my marathon results. The idea that I could still work towards times achieved years ago was merely a product of my battered athlete's-ego, which blinded me to this reality. From then on, I ran much lighter, free from the weight of the burdensome runner's-ego. And through the hole that was left after my happy delusion was punctured, I could see my running practices in more realistic and therefore more enjoyable ways. I gave up my interest in results. I stopped racing and never wore my watch again during a run. I now run with no worry in the world. While slower, I am now flying perfectly.
Running and Reality
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay Circles, spoke of the "Unattainable, the flying Perfect." Beyond my runner-ego-ism and past my cheerful but false athlete-delusions, the place in which I could fly perfectly was no longer unattainable. Plato too, sensed perfection beyond our fuzzy and confused view of this bogus place we erroneously call reality. But this perfection, says Plato, is so far away that we can never "know" it. But distance is no problem for a runner, who might occasionally experience brief and fleeting moments of insight, during which perfection can be sensed. I spoke with a number of distance runners about running and sensing perfection. The way they describe their experiences is illustrative. Listen for example to Dutch long-distance runner Hans:
A while back, I ran along the beach, on our most northern coast. The sound of waves crashing against the beach, the salty wind and the rhythm of my breath and runners slapping the wet sand. After a while, I had the distinct sense that I had become the surf. I felt part of the landscape yet very distanced at the same time, in the sense that I no longer felt a need for judgment. I experienced what was around me without thoughts about it. My judging self had left me, and I saw the things as they truly are.
While running, Hans seemed to have pierced through the veil that obscures our view of things. He "saw the things as they truly are." While this was in a way what Plato had in mind, I'm guessing that he would have been suspicious of the idea that a runner could experience it. Although Plato was a supporter of rigorous physical and intellectual training, he was suspicious of the body and its senses. After all, the body is part of what Plato called the "twilight world of change and decay" and therefore "worthy only of disdain." What we believe reality to be is based on what we see, hear, feel, smell, and touch, all of which, says Plato, is part of our murky, inconsistent and untruthful reality. Wine for instance, might taste sweet to me when I am feeling well, but the very same wine might taste bitter when I am ill. Stronger still, Plato points out, we ourselves change when our condition changes from health to illness or vice versa. Dutch runner Klaartje knows the feeling:
Sometimes, during a long-distance run, the world around me suddenly becomes less colorful. It goes a shade darker. It is a premonition. When I see things around me go dark, I know I will hit the wall very soon. I know that before long I will not be able to go on. Soon, I will not have energy left for running, and my body will feel empty. The darkening around me is not real, it is just how it then appears to me.
Alas, the absurdity of relying on the sensuous body, says Plato. No truth can emerge from these continually changing sensations, only opinions and shifting beliefs. No, the transcendent, the "flying perfection" beyond this false reality, is the real thing for Plato. And we can learn to see it with the mind's eye, if only we train it with "tools", which are as independent from this false and unreliable physical realm as possible. Pure and abstract reasoning and mathematics, for example, will help lead the way toward truth, according to Plato. For Plato, truth requires a move inward, as far away as possible from the unreliable sensuality of the body and its surroundings. Yet runners, immersed in the physical realm, are also able, at least at times, to see a world beyond the ego-distorted world. Listen for example to my local friend and marathoner Mike:
When I run by myself, usually in trails among nature, I am fully alive. Propelling myself along the ground I am quiet, a peaceful self silence, where I can listen to nature. The earth and I are at one. The binding ropes of time are snapped, as no measure is relevant; no two strides are exactly the same length or speed. My running is the ultimate prison break, and with time and death nullified, my mind is freed, as the prison bars of fear fade to nothing.
Mike's words are surprisingly similar to Plato's words in Allegory of the Cave. In the allegory Plato illustrates what we gain by liberating ourselves from our rigid views of a false and deceitful reality, or, in Plato's words, the "prison dwelling of our visible realm," the material world where we are tied by our wants and desires. Liberating ourselves from these bonds of desires and distancing ourselves from the mundane concerns of day-to-day life will purify our soul. We would, as it were, forget ourselves in beholding eternity.
Take my running shoes. What makes them shoes? This might strike you as an odd question, but our "knowing" what a shoe is, is really only based on the general features it shares with the many other things we call "shoes." Shoe essence if you will, or "shoe-ness." I am guessing that most of us have never seen this "shoe-ness" that makes shoes what they are. Yet if we follow Plato's ideas, pure "shoe-ness" exists. In a higher realm beyond the here and now, a pure and eternal form, or mold, of the True Shoe exists. My running shoes are mere "reflections" or "shadows" of that true form "Shoe" and only through liberation from the physical realm can we behold the true Running Shoe. More importantly, we can contemplate the forms, such as Equality, Beauty, Courage and Goodness. If we free ourselves from the physical realm, we will experience Truth and Reality.
But is this not what Mike and Hans were describing? While running, the world manifests itself to them fully, in its actual and concrete qualities. And Mike and Hans are part of it. But while Plato suggested we move closer to knowing perfection though internal reflection and contemplation, their experience rests on an external movement- a total immersion in that sensuous world. And furthermore, they do it without reflection. Hans, for instance, became part of his surroundings, he "became the surf", without a grasping self, wanting to understand. Without, he says, "thoughts about it". His "judging self" gone, he saw "things as they truly are. " Mike likewise, does not try to understand or to get to know the perfect. Rather, he too is in his surroundings as an observer. Even though "no two strides are exactly the same ," and all moments in the experience are different, Mike does not try to know them. Rather, he is in it as a "quiet, peaceful self silence," flying perfectly.
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References
David A. Reidy (1998). False Pleasures and Plato's Philebus. The Journal of Value Inquiry 32: 343-356.
Kluwer Academic Publishers. Available online at http://web.utk.edu/~dreidy/philebusarticle.pdf
John M. Cooper (Ed.). (1997). Plato. Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company.
Pierre Hadot. (1995). Philosophy as a Way of Life. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ray Grigg. (1994). The Toa of Zen. Boston: Alva Press.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. (1909). Essays and English Traits. New York : P.F. Collier.
