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“Art is what the artist says it is,” Marcel Duchamp had proudly forestated. The average mind would simply interpret this as “art can be anything”. However, Duchamp meant to imply that there really is no limit to what art ‘can be’. There is a difference.

Likewise, the fine concept of contemplation is a recursive contemplation on itself. No one can really define what contemplation truly is without having to contemplate over its own accord. Similarly, when we wish to express what can be the possible definition of the so-called term of the ‘art’ of contemplation, it is a guarantee that no living person can be one hundred percent sure about the answer. The possibilities of a possible definition are endless, it would seem.

Rather than calling it a term with a boundless property of meanings, I would like to emphasize that the contemplation art refers to contemplation and not to contemplation, simultaneously. It is a cosmic paradox that is mysteriously unsolvable by us who possess such feeble, curious, and yet, selfish minds.

There I was, on a fine morning, when everything and everyone was busy contemplating on one another. The sun’s static life, the birds’ momentous rhythm of indecipherable voices, the people with their synthetic delusions of a human world — everything I would contemplate on, I knew, would have contemplations and thoughts running at their own pace, their own rules, their own parameters, their own existence. Contemplation on another living creature worthy of contemplation would result in an invisible bridge that shapes the respect of our relationships. If our contemplations match in the sense that we both have positive thoughts for each other, we act friendly. Otherwise, a crude enmity remains as a residue.

The art of contemplation is a truly wonderful thing of divine beauty.

Nature is a fan of contemplation, too. More elaborately, everything we do and everything that we know of is a part of a sacred contemplation of God’s creation. I should certainly add in, living organisms like ourselves have been built to be engines of this stunning art that we call contemplation. Humans, like all lifeforms, eat to regenerate their energy potential. Our organs are on standby for commands — contemplations from the brain — to control our bodily functions in an organized manner. Organs exist which process and extract the energy content. Other organs exist to ensure that we remain safely, securely, and soundly healthy. But the primary aim of gathering all this energy is none other than to feed the holy desire of contemplation!

I have often asked myself why so. And, unconsciously, I have fallen into its realm myself. We are beings made from thought, for the purpose of thought. It is the power of thought that leads us places, identifies objects, restores meanings to ideas and much more. The depth of contemplation has no end, for it is as much of a bottomless pit for meanings as a stellar blackhole would be for light.

It is not consciousness nor knowledge that helps us make sense of this world. Solely, it is mere contemplation. Contemplation alone.

Even now as you read through this essay, your mind is indirectly contemplating on every word, every syllable, translating and transforming them from the raw forms of language and digesting them further to link bonds between neurons in the brain, whereby establishing meanings from abstract text characters just as any computer scientist would poetically compare with it the process of a digital machine processing input as binary data. These bonds then form links with what we know and do not know, forming images of what we are contemplating on. Here and now or later, this peculiarly fascinating art has its roots holding onto everything. As simple and as complicated as it gets, contemplation occurs every moment of our lives. Even not thinking about something requires a heavy rank of contemplation!

I have noticed that the defined term of contemplation easily fits into every niche and corner of every other form of art. The art of literature is the contemplation of language. The art of painting is the contemplation of visual senses and expressions. The art of drama is the contemplation of entertainment. The list goes on.

Moving on with the topic, it is not a matter of stories but a matter of contemplation that brings forth a meaning to language. A meaning to art, a meaning to life. Woe betide all the physicists who had been (and still are) hunting day and night for the “theory of everything” to solve every problem and answer every question unanswered regarding the secrets of the universe. They would not find anything. Their logical manner of contemplation, unfortunately, has been dented and stained by society’s evil desires and a special type of hunger fueled by an incentive quest to betray religion. Philosophers, on the other hand, already know that the key to such a thing is contemplation. Because they are people who do not fight the tide of contemplation; they make the stream of thoughts their own, and float peacefully along with the current.

Although my intuition likes to interpret it as ‘the art of an art’, the art of contemplation is not just an art within itself. It is infinitely worth more than that. An art of all art.

And, indeed, this is what we live for.