Where I grew up, there were large woods behind our house, only two streets away. Many paths were tramped through these woods by all the neighborhood kids. Today the woods are still there, the neighborhood is still filled with kids, but there are no paths between the trees.
We crumble back into our heads and our past. We see ourselves as a Monopoly game marker plodding along toward some imagined time horizon. We re-identify in the mirror. TV and Internet invite us into a world of other elsewheres, where we are totalitarian in our relaxed, lazy control. "Click" once, twice, and Mozart evaporates into CNN. To get the weather we tap a palm-top computer that talks, through sheer witchcraft, to a satellite, that talks to a computer, that finds our zip code file, that logs some statistics, that bounce off the satellite, and then appear in our palm screen as The Weather Channel, Your Local Forecast.
In my lifetime we have gone from looking up at the blue sky with whispy mares tales to this. On bad ecology days it becomes clear that we will not save the planet. We no longer care at all about the planet. It does not exists for us. No, that's not quite right; it does not exist IN us. Nature, to us, has settled down into abstraction, just like the rest of our lives. We do not recognize ourselves in nature, let alone recognize that nature is us. A "nature" show on the Discovery Channel, and the nature it was lifted from are now indistinguishable to us. To understand Nature (True Nature), we have to start somewhere. So, let's start with pig shit.
There is a university in Illinois that has hired a number of college women to help in an experiment. Each day they smell pig shit in an effort to determine why pig shit stinks. Jay Leno, in his tonight show monologue, has had a field day with this. But hey! Wait! Seriously now, and with all kidding aside, why does it stink?
We walk through the woods. We smell the fresh air. The light is beautiful. The leaves move. A bird flies off. Another calls. Our attention goes from one to the other. But what is our grasp of them? Are we simply free associating them, tagging them as it were? I remember my teacher pointing out a tree, saying "look!" But I tagged, thought, associated, referred to my "knowledge," and stumbled helplessly down the path of familiar separation. "That's a sugar maple," I said, proud and secure in the knowledge. I'm amazed he continued to be my teacher. He should have washed my mouth out with soap. It was more than a weak moment, more than a lack of attention, more than words getting in the way. I never saw that tree at all.
That we even refer to "Nature" is a sign of our separation. I wonder about the use of the word one millennium ago. Did it refer to a green "Other?" Back in the Dark Ages was Nature over there, like it is now? Did a Middle Ages farmer have a concept of Nature at all? Or did he just watch it rain, feel the sun, smell the pig shit? In Europe there was the intervention of a "God." Life was mediated not by palm top computers and CNN but by religion. It is not just our technology that separates us from Nature. We believe that we are (or are not) in Nature. We do not grasp that we are Nature, any more that the Dark Ages farmer could grasp that he was God. And the more time we spend in what we can label the "Human Universe," the less likely we are to ever grasp Nature for what it is. The Human Universe here refers to the land of discursive thought, with all the props, products, supports, behaviors, and beliefs that operate out of discursive thought. It is from this Human Universe that questions arise like "Why does pig shit stink?" But can we see Nature for what it is? Can there be apprehension of the Whole, where this objective Nature is dissolved right along with the Observer?
One feature of the Human Universe is the grasping at, and the illusion of, substantiality. We chase after a kind of lastingness, a permanence. Our insurance industry, our retirement system, vinyl siding, ionized car paint, face lifts, and thousands of other efforts and institutions are all wrapped tightly around stopping change. From the climate control in our buildings to the preserving of food in our freezer, we seek to reach, then hold on to, a present that is secure. We have other names for impermanence, none flattering: death, decay, insecurity, aging. We can seem to keep it at bay through drugs, electronics, surgery, mutual funds, and other smoke and mirrors. But it is the Law. All attempts to circumvent it are doomed, and are based on the deep seated conviction that the self is the limited and temporary creature our intellect and senses say it is. Beyond our very basic activities (those in accord with Nature, since they are thoughtless activities) we who reside almost exclusively in the Human Universe are largely engaged in spinning a cocoon of substantiality and permanence around ourselves. But if we step directly into natural surroundings, and stay there for any length of time, we are confronted with impermanence on a large scale. In Nature, nothing lasts. The woods are teaming with impermanence.
And yet, right there in the natural setting there is permanence. Everything lasts forever. While something in us suspects the truth of this observation, the realization of it is elusive. In the Human Universe, where we consider thought and emotion as ground, the pull of the greater human community is always away from this realization. The human community pulls us deeper into distraction, away from the truth of things. While this has always been the case, contemporary life is filled with technologies that can help, if not coerce, us in spinning a twenty-four hour web of thinking and distraction. From walkman to cell phone, from internet to satellite dish, from SUV to whole-house climate control, we are more enmeshed than ever in the Human Universe. When we suddenly hurl ourselves into truly natural surroundings, our Nature vividly appears within and before us. We are arrested on a high mountain by something we have not been forced to face (silence. There is no reassuring motor in the ear, no hum of the computer or the furnace. We get to be alone in the Great Impermanence. And the question can perhaps more vibrantly arise: What is it here that does not die?
Certainly a major manifestation of our trouble is words. The Human Universe is tightly wrapped up in words. This does not mean that it is not after all still the universe of Nature. Ultimately, where can we go to escape our Nature? But words can put up mirage walls that we simply will not challenge. We are just like the little rabbit that stops and looks longingly at the vegetable garden that is protected only by a little white plastic picket fence just inches higher than herself. She could easily hop right over it, but she sees the little fence as massive, never to be circumvented.
Words erect fences, give us boundaries, yardsticks, values. We come to believe that they are reality, not simply markers in our head that we move around to represent reality. In a similar vein the Human universe is marked by straight lines and right angles. Look around you right now. Notice all the straight edges. But out in the woods, everything is egg-shaped. And one tree blends with another. We call a lot of trees close together a "stand." Perhaps we should call it a "waving." While the Human Universe is straight-edged, stagnant (any wind blowing in the room you are in?), and worded, Nature is oval, edgeless, moving, and speechless.
In the woods, at the beach, on the hilltops, Nature will not present us with words. Herein may be the greatest gift of practice in a natural setting. It aids us in our ongoing attempts to break through the Human Universe to the Truth. If we talk, we invade Nature with our chatter. Our worded distinctions are not natural, and the natural environment will not reply in kind. Do not think that the cardinal you are speaking to is whistling back in way of answer. She doesn't need to whistle back. But we need to believe that she is actually responding ( it provides a foil for our ego. Neither does she see tragedy or humor in her use of a plastic straw for part of her nesting material. She only threads it through. She builds right in your house's folded up awning. Why not? Is she stupid, or is she free?
Nature helps us practice simply by being. If we ignore it, staying on the internet, in our house, in our car, on the phone, we reinforce the little ego. We thereby retreat into our Human Universe, reaffirm our separation, and wonder all the more at our alienation. And we will ask questions like "why does pig shit stink?" And then we will wait for an answer.
-Sensei Sevan Ross