Curious what different aspects the “duration of seclusion” is meant to be a proxy for?
You defindefinitelyitly point at things like “when are they expected to produce intelligible output” and “what sorts of questions appear most relevant to them”. Another dimension that came to mind—but I am not sure you mean or not to include that in the concept—is something like “how often are they allowed/able to peak directly at the world, relative to the length of periods during which they reason about things in ways that are removed from empirical data”?
As Henry points out in his comment, certainly at least some 1,000 and 10,000-day monks must need to encounter the territory daily. I think that for some monks there is probably a restriction to actually not look for the full duration, but for others there are probably more regular contacts.
I think that one thing the duration of seclusion is likely to be a firm proxy for is “length of time between impinging distractions.” Like, there is in fact a way in which most people can have longer, deeper thoughts while hiking on a mountainside with no phone or internet, which is for most people severely curtailed even by having phone or internet for just 20min per day at a set time.
So I think that even if a monk is in regular contact with society, the world, etc., there’s something like a very strong protection against other people claiming that the monk owes them time/attention/words/anything.
Curious what different aspects the “duration of seclusion” is meant to be a proxy for?
You defindefinitelyitly point at things like “when are they expected to produce intelligible output” and “what sorts of questions appear most relevant to them”. Another dimension that came to mind—but I am not sure you mean or not to include that in the concept—is something like “how often are they allowed/able to peak directly at the world, relative to the length of periods during which they reason about things in ways that are removed from empirical data”?
As Henry points out in his comment, certainly at least some 1,000 and 10,000-day monks must need to encounter the territory daily. I think that for some monks there is probably a restriction to actually not look for the full duration, but for others there are probably more regular contacts.
I think that one thing the duration of seclusion is likely to be a firm proxy for is “length of time between impinging distractions.” Like, there is in fact a way in which most people can have longer, deeper thoughts while hiking on a mountainside with no phone or internet, which is for most people severely curtailed even by having phone or internet for just 20min per day at a set time.
So I think that even if a monk is in regular contact with society, the world, etc., there’s something like a very strong protection against other people claiming that the monk owes them time/attention/words/anything.