It only takes a slight difference of emphasis or wording or direction to go from wonderful to terrible. I was surprised when reading the famous Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh (tik not han) to find that he advised me to learn to see a manure pile when I looked at a flower. Why spoil the pleasure of a flower with manure?
He was trying to get me to be able to feel my connection to the circle of existence, to the closeness I have to all that is. In my present form, I can think and move, laugh and write. 100 years ago, the atoms that are now part of me were not organized to do that and in another 100 years, they will again be reorganized into some other format. To his credit, Thich Nhat Hanh make it just as clear that he advised me to see a flower when looking at a manure pile.
Americans have built much of their heritage on pioneer images, from the Pilgrims on. When dropped on a foreign shore, with little training and plenty of harsh weather to suffer, not to mention other difficulties and challenges, we learned to emphasize that we need to be able to stand on our own feet and depend on ourselves. Our heritage and culture emphasize individuality and the independence of the individual maybe more than any other on earth.
But the truth is that we come from our parents' bodies and we can't reach two years of age without tons of help and love and support.
Recently, President Obama gave a speech emphasizing that each of us uses roads, schools, books, tv shows, foods, water systems and untold other essentials and conveniences that we didn't build ourselves. Mitch Romney answered that we paid for those things with our taxes and purchases. But to me, that response emphasized our interdependence. We did pay taxes and fees but WE did that, not me by myself. It is fun to think of my own very fine achievements, that you, poor soul, probably don't have a prayer of doing. It is soothing to my ego but a short, old guy like myself only needs a moment to remember my parents, my teachers and professors, my physicians and dentists, the drivers that brought the clothes and foods and books and computers - in just a moment, I realize, unAmerican and unDaniel Boone or not, that by myself, all by myself, I haven't done much. I am intermingled with people and creatures and plants and geological and meteorological processes all over the earth.
Hannah Holmes tells me in "The Secret Life of Dust" that leaving my car outside overnight will likely get me at least one speck of dust on the hood that has gotten here from some other heavenly body than this planet. Man! I am connected!
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
