You seem to treat “Is this done with the right attention” as being synonymous with “connected to the heart” as if “connected to the heart” would be a metaphor instead of a functional description of a state.
Yes, I do, with the minor correction that I said “right intention”, not “right attention”. But right attention is a prerequisite for everything else. “Virtue has many tools, but they are all grasped with the handle of attention.”
Yes, I read “the heart” as a metaphor. Literally, the heart is a blood pump, which works faster or slower, stronger or weaker, according to instructions from elsewhere in the body. “Connected to the heart” is (as I read it) a metaphorical description of a state. What is meant by a literal “connection to the heart”?
As background to this, I have done about 15 years of tai chi and 10 years of taiko (Japanese drumming), and I am quite familiar with the sorts of (as I read them) metaphors and visualisations one must enact in order to obtain the desired results from the body. I follow Crowley’s warning against “attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.”
Yes, I do, with the minor correction that I said “right intention”, not “right attention”. But right attention is a prerequisite for everything else. “Virtue has many tools, but they are all grasped with the handle of attention.”
Yes, I read “the heart” as a metaphor. Literally, the heart is a blood pump, which works faster or slower, stronger or weaker, according to instructions from elsewhere in the body. “Connected to the heart” is (as I read it) a metaphorical description of a state. What is meant by a literal “connection to the heart”?
As background to this, I have done about 15 years of tai chi and 10 years of taiko (Japanese drumming), and I am quite familiar with the sorts of (as I read them) metaphors and visualisations one must enact in order to obtain the desired results from the body. I follow Crowley’s warning against “attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.”