We Are Not Alone
“Whenever we throw something away, whether in the garbage can, the compost, or the recycling, it can smell terrible. Rotting organic matter smells especially badly. But it can also become rich compost for fertilizing the garden. The fragrant rose and the stinking garbage are two sides of the same existence. Without one, the other cannot be. Everything becomes a part of the garbage. After six months, the garbage is transformed into a rose. When we speak of impermanence, we understand that everything is in transformation. This becomes that, and that becomes this.
Looking deeply, we can contemplate one thing and see everything else in it. We are not disturbed by change when we see the interconnectedness and continuity of all things. It is not that the life of an individual is permanent, but that life itself continues. When we identify ourselves with life and go beyond the boundaries of a separate identity, we shall be able to see the permanence in the impermanent, or the rose in the garbage.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
__________________________________________________________________
In a universe of many things, there is interconnection.
From the many, there is one.
Out of one, there are many.
We may organize our life into categories and feel as though we exist apart from everything else, but we do not. We may use our language to conceptualize, categorize, and systematize all of this existence into differences, but fundamentally, everything is in relation to everything else. There is no true separation.
In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu said, “The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.”
Our lives are dependent on the lives of others — not merely on our fellow human beings, but on the network of plants and trees, on the fish in the water and the birds in the wind. Without clouds, there would be no rain. Without the sun, there would be no flowers blooming. Without one, there would not be the other.
We are not alone.
We depend on the conditions of the world so that we can be. This world mutually rises and falls. It changes like water that flows through rocks. We may try to cling to a rock, struggling in our sweat, bleeding and grasping to security, or we can let go.
***
In our lives, are we balanced? Our intentions, thoughts and actions, should harmonize with inner and outer nature. We are in this fleeting, changing river. We are this fleeting changing river. All things are dualities, such as light and dark, female and male, life and death. Rather than clinging to one side or another, which causes great suffering, we must discover what lies beyond our conceptualizations.
Beyond the categories of right and wrong, we can discover an inner stillness.
As Chaung Tzu said, “The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing. It receives but does not keep.”
We are often blocked and cannot see the world clearly. Our past experiences, judgements, opinions, reduce us. We then perceive though a filter of symbols, experiences, preferences, unable to feel this moment. How can we solve the conflicts of humanity if we cannot move past our own biases, fears, prejudices, and judgements?
In Zen in the Age of Anxiety, Tim Burkett said that we often see each other through our past experiences and expectations. Instead of actually perceiving a person for who they are, we are trapped in thoughts about that person. Our thoughts, rather than helping us see clearly, conceal who that person is. Others are placed in certain roles and are judged for who they appear to be, rather than seen as a changing process. Resentment, anger and fear, likewise, cloud our minds. Consumed with such states, we can’t honestly see the goodness in each other.
***
It is common to look to higher authorities to tell us what to do. We seek the guru, teacher, self-help book, scientist, politician, writer, and follow their advice. Meanwhile we deny our own perceptions, feelings, thoughts, merely following someone who will tell us what to do, how to think, how to live. Don’t become hypnotized with authority. Many charismatic people convince us to neglect our own minds. We can get caught up in their enthusiasm and clever rhetoric. Whenever we deny our own processes, we are not being intelligent.
Instead of relying on ourselves, we memorize the work of others. In them, as Emerson said, “We recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
Intelligence is not about following others or about indulging in our own prejudices. It isn’t about adhering to an abstraction of the good life or finding an absolute answer for everything. Genuine intelligence comes from not rejecting our own souls. We must never stop questioning, doubting, investigating. We need to be mindful of life, sensitive to our feelings, thoughts, and perceptions.
Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun and author, said “To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes. ” When we are not able to clearly look within ourselves, when we are not brave enough to confront our own confusion or pain, when we harden our hearts, we will cause ourselves and others suffering. We cannot live in this world without a gentle awareness of who we are. Our ignorance will be our downfall. We need to be mindful of our own darkness, compassionate toward ourselves and others.
Furthermore, as Chodron said, “feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”
There is no absolute method to find the truth of our lives. We come into self-knowledge through our sensitivity to what changes. Sometimes we are afraid because, deep inside ourselves, we will find no solid answers to our pain, our sorrow, our confusion. There is an uncertainty, a groundlessness, which we are aware of. It is easy to hide, to run, to ignore that uncertain feeling. Most of our patterns in life stem from our fear of not knowing.
Our thoughts alone are limited. We live with a notion of Self — conditioned from experiences, memories, books we have read, teachers we have listened to, commands from our parents, instructions in schools, and so on. Death threatens our notion of Self — an ending to all our memories, to all the conditions that make up our permanent, isolated egos — and we tremble before our own annihilation. We seek security to hide, to not confront our fear. To be free is to be mindful of our fear and hate, desire and resistance, likes and dislikes. In silent awareness, we do not have to believe in anything. We do not have to belong to any group or religion or philosophy. We are not apart from everything else, floating down the river.
We are the river.
As Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “That silence has never been touched by thought, and only then that for which man has searched from time immemorial, something sacred, something nameless, supreme, comes. It is only that mind that is so utterly free from all the travails of life; it is only such a mind that can find the supreme. That means meditation, which is the expression of daily activity.”
When mind understands its movement, its thoughts and feelings, there is no judgement. There is no condemnation. From riding in a bus down a country road to sitting in a yogic pose, from hiking in the wilderness to laying to sleep, every moment is a practice of self-awareness. Life then isn’t merely the abstraction of what is good. It is the sight of our lover’s face, filled with light over their lips and the shadows in their hair. It is the unity of the breath with the birds singing, the plane humming over a mountain top, the leaves curling over grass.
There’s no longer a fragmentation of life, only a transforming world.
