**3. Idea of the contemplative experience**

What do we mean when we talk about the contemplative experience? Just as the name suggests, the contemplative experience is an experience. Therefore, it is something that is lived and experienced. It is something that we undertake, and that simultaneously happens to us. It is something that emanates from us and that returns to us. As the central psychological state of the contemplative experience, mindfulness is a vehicle through which this experience occurs. Lira refers to a central aspect of the contemplative attitude and the capacity to grasp beauty. He states that 'beauty is not seen when one is asleep, identified with pleasure or pain, when one is not paying attention and not concentrating, when the mind passes mechanically from one object to another without stopping, when it looks without seeing' [5].

From the Buddhist contemplative tradition, and especially Zen Buddhism, aesthetic observation arises from central philosophical ideas, such as dhyȃna (contemplation), sȗnyatȃ (emptiness), anattā (non-self) and nirvȃna (illumination).

#### **3.1. Dhyȃna**

Contemplation (dhyȃna) is central to Buddhism. To stop, calm the mind and observe in silence the flow of mental and bodily states and those of the world around us, is the most distinctive act of mindfulness. Aesthetic and artistic contemplation, especially of nature, in the process of seeking illumination is relevant to Buddhism. Lomas [17] states that 'in Zen, art is regarded as a particularly potent way of communicating spiritual truths, indeed, far more so than discursive prose. Zen constantly seeks to eschew and overcome the limitations of conceptual thought, and to "point directly" into the "suchness" (i.e. nature) of reality'.
