In philosophical contemplation, we don’t try to reach a conclusion. We contemplate an idea or a text, and we don’t wait for a bottom line, we don’t expect a product – a final decision, an answer, a theory, a statement.

This might sound surprising. “If contemplation doesn’t give us any conclusion,” one might say, “then what is it good for? Why bother with contemplation if it doesn’t give us any answer? This is poetry or music, not philosophy!”

And indeed, philosophical contemplation is a little bit like music. When you go to a musical performance and listen to the musicians playing, you are not waiting for a final result at the end of the performance. You sit and listen for an hour or two because every moment is meaningful in itself. Music is meaningful as a continuous movement, as an ongoing process. It happens in time.

Similarly, contemplative philosophy is a “music” of ideas, a continuous movement. It is meaningful not because it produces a bottom-line at the end, but because of what happens to you and your companions during the entire session, minute by minute. Every moment is (potentially) meaningful in itself. You are touched by the movement of ideas, you savor the search, the wonder, the confusion, the moment of insight.

So to some extent, philosophical contemplation is a ‘music,” but every metaphor has its limits. Contemplation is meaningful not simply because the sentences are beautiful, but because the ideas that we contemplate awaken in us a special kind of understanding.

When we contemplate, when we are in the movement of ideas, we are closer to the reality which we contemplate. When we contemplate on the meaning of love, for example, we can be closer to the reality of love than any theory about love. When we contemplate a text on freedom, we can be closer to the reality of freedom than any theoretical explanation of freedom. This is because we participate in the “music of reality,” we let the “music of reality” resonate in us, and we play together with it. We no longer try to LOOK AT the reality of love, of freedom, of meaning, of life and death – we are now part of it, like players in the concert hall of reality.

We learn the music of reality by participating in it, by singing together with it. This is how you learn love – by experiencing a love story. This is how you learn meaning – by feeling meaning or meaninglessness. This is how you come to know your friends – by spending time with them, talking together, and doing things together. And this is how you learn reality – by being together with it. Through this togetherness, we learn to understand reality more intimately than any theory.

Of course, theoretical ideas are important. When we contemplate, we contemplate on philosophical texts and ideas, and many of them are very abstract. Contemplation is a movement of ideas, and without ideas there is no philosophical contemplation. But ideas in contemplation, unlike in academic discussions, are like musical sentences in a symphony. They are voices of reality, and they invite us to resonate with them and sing with them, and to do so with all our hearts and minds, in the deepest way we can.

And hopefully, after the end of the contemplation session, when we return to our everyday life, we will continue in this movement of understanding even when we prepare dinner, or wait for the bus, or talk with the boss, or rush to work in the morning.