Two Questions

I notice I feel one of two main questions when I observe or engage with a thing:

1. How does this help/hurt me?

or

2. How does this feel?

The first underlies a utilitarian approach, where my interest in the thing depends on its relationship to me. I seek either to extract gain from it, or to avoid harm from it, and that is all. Under this perspective, the thing is a goal, a mine, a tool, or a bane, a villain, an obstacle. It must lie on either side of the spectrum of preference, and exists only as a relationship to myself.

The second question seeks to know the thing, to explore it. It is not driven by either desire or fear, as the first often is, but by curiosity. "What IS that?", I wonder, and I imagine myself as the thing. "How does it feel to move my body like that dancer? What is the curve of that birdsong like? What is it like to lay at the mercy of the elements like the rock does, yet to suffer no harm therefrom? What is it like to stretch a thousand arms high into the air, to host myriads of insects in me, and to sway between the earth and sky lifelong? Whence comes that anger? What is it like to have fluid and fungible bodies, like clouds? What is the experience of being light? Why does a material universe experience consciousness?" In each of these cases, my mind morphs into the thing and attempts to experience it. By embodying it, I engage what I observe about the thing, and infer and imagine what it feels like to be that thing.

Both of these two questions cannot be active at the same time. When I care about gain and loss, my perspective is skewed, and having a faithful understanding of the thing feels immaterial. It is only when I release the preferences in me that my mind is free to explore and play, unbiased by preset directions and standards.