Dan74 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 26, 2018 8:11 pm
But I'd also like to say that non-bodily or non- primarily bodily doesn't mean 'conceptual', unless you mean conceptual in a different sense? It can be a very deeply felt emotional or spiritual experience that would also reflect in the body, but in a secondary manner.
I hear you. By "primarily conceptual," I here just mean experiencing art in the main as an object upon which one projects one's own fabrications, reflexive judgements, intellectualizing, analysis, and so on.
A truer way to experience art from the Zen perspective is more wholly psycho-physical, which gives the possibility of seamlessly mirroring or "joining with," rather than viewing "object" from the standpoint of "subject." It is a seeing without seeing, if you will. In the former way of viewing, the object is a target of our gaze, and our minds reach out through the senses to examine and interpret. In the latter way of viewing, the object rings us like a bell. Or you could say, one is seen as much as one sees.
There is oral instruction RE how to view something like calligraphy, for example, discussing things in terms of energetics, detailing how to hold one's posture, how to "see" using the
hara, and so on. In other words, there are usages of body that support this experience.