Blue Shoulders, Blue Sky

Tree swallows are back on their house.  Looking up at them I see the clear blue sky.  Then I see the clear blue shoulders on the birds.  Mirrors for each other, are the shoulders sky and is sky the birds?  Sky and bird feed each other in their play.  The sky knows itself through bird flight and the bird know itself through sky expanse. 

They each fly without tracks.  Only mind can see their imprints, can feel their clarity and blueness.  Blessed to experience the blazing vision of swallow song and sky with a gentle breeze off the mountains.  Spring morning is full of beginnings.

Posted by michael

War Is A False Premise

We wage war as an enemy, no different from the threats to our security.  This is an illogical, impossible task.  We are willing to go beyond all boundaries in defense of our boundaries.  We yell democracy, and are unwilling to listen to voices of differing opinion within democracy.  We are afraid of terror and project terror unrelenting in its cloak of justice.  The enemy is us as war can only be waged by threat.  Defense is another word for being afraid to listen to our inner voice.  We shall not kill, except when it suits our defense of the right to be an enemy to all those who oppose us.  

Who came up with these aggressive actions?  It has been going on much too long and it is time to trust; in family, friends, neighbors, and humanity.  There will always be a cause to fear.  Peace comes from a confidence that is in the heart.  Disarm the heart and peace will spread.  War is only the darkness that fear makes in the heart.  Turn on the light of open mind and fear will dissolve in the mirror of enemy face that we project to all our enemies. 

Posted by michael

Experiments With Color And Emotion

Posted by michael

Wheels And Essence

Thirty Spokes share one hub.  Adapt the space therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the cart.  Knead clay in order to make a vessel.  Adapt the space therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the vessel.  Cut open doors and windows in order to make a room.  Adapt the space therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the room.  Thus what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that this can be put to use.     

Chapter 11, Tao Te Ching, translated by D.C. Lau.  

Have you ever looked around and seen that everything moves around its own central hub, or point and axis of origin?  We could call this point the center of gravity for an object.  This point and axis of origin is composed of space, otherwise looked upon and defined as Nothing.  We can not define space, yet it contains everything and is singular.  Space can be divided up by objects into inner space and outer space.  Still there is only one space, undefined, omniscient, and connecting all objects.  Space is the mother of all objects and cradles them in a warm and compassionate embrace.

The interconnection of space and movement is called emptiness and forms all objects and thoughts contained therein.  Objects and perceptions do not have intrinsic, unchanging existence.  Since the objects and their perceptions exist only by virtue of their emptiness, they are illusory, like the image formed by a whirling firebrand or a reflection in a mirror.  Cause and effect arise from interconnections.  The problem of existence is not the connections.  The problem is the clinging to the connections.  Gently watch the turning of objects around their space and you will see their joy at play.  This joy is an unbounded expression of the limitless freedom for life.

Posted by michael

Black Swan Events And Paradigm Shifts

The negative black swan events have come to roost and humans are not very happy about it.  They manifest as economic market crashes, human tragedy emanating from Sumatra and Japan earthquakes and tsunamis, climate change in an ever-shifting planetary swirl of the moisture-heat-cloud-rain engine.  Floods of great magnitude rearrange the land, ocean, and sky and carve new river beds and marshes.  We did not notice at first, until more people became involved and compassion swelled in our hearts for those trapped by events of great consequence.  

Black swan events are surprising, rare, and unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence, with dominant roles in history events that occur on the tail ends of evidence probability curves.  They can be positive or negative, depending on our interpretation of the consequences that result from them and they can change the course of civilization.  As such, black swan events cannot be predicted and will not be accounted for in the mechanistic conceptualization of rational scientific thinking.  Science depends on the repeatable and predictable patterns of sequential events that have frequent occurrence.  For rare events of great magnitude, we say they are black swan events, and then feel smug to have identified the unidentifiable, without seeing or understanding that we live in a world punctuated by rare major events with undefinable risk or benefit.   

Paradigms are conceptual frameworks that encapsulate the current assumptions about how systems work.  As we work out the details of a system to improve understanding and predictability, we maintain our initial assumptions until evidence shows that they are incorrect.  Then we replace these assumptions with ones that more correctly reflect our evidence.  With this assumption replacement, the paradigm shifts and we have a new conceptual view of the system.  Sometimes the shifts are so large that the system becomes unrecognized; Newtonian mechanics to quantum physics, magic to modern medicine, alchemy to chemistry. 

Black swan events can produce paradigm shifts when we are overwhelmed by our inability to explain the events and consequences of surprising, rare events.  If our world view (model and assumptions) is flexible and we are not attached to outcomes of events, then our thinking and perceptions can shift and we can adapt to the new arrangement of evidence, through systems of food, clothing, shelter, work, play, sleep, families, economies, and science.  

Expect the unexpected in the open space of free thinking.  When assumptions are dissolved and our experience becomes assumption-free, then we can begin to live in the actual world, rather than in a world of assumption and probability.  Black swan events can remind us that our world is risky and composed of changes, beyond the predictability of science and rational thought.  How to think without thought?  Experience, without interpretation.  It takes great patience and courage to be free.  Can we suspend our disbelief?  In wildness is the strength of life. 

Posted by michael 

Chainsaw Mirror

Occasionally some trees are cut, because they died their natural death, they are shading too much, or they threaten to fall on something else. During a windstorm they are going to fall in the driveway or onto a garden.  Or they are shading the solar electric panels and the sunscape needs to be cleared.  So then the chainsaw comes out of the shed and begins its work in my hands.

The chainsaw has been with me since I began clearing the land in 1986.  So we have grown older together.  Younger, we used to cut all day when clearing the driveway and the lower garden.  Over the years we have slowed down; not needing to cut trees and feeling relaxed about clearing, no longer keeping many paths open.  Now the chainsaw likes to cut for the duration of a tank of gas and then it wants to stop.  Seems like it doesn't like to run when its hot.  Neither do I when I am hot.  So we stop and cool off.  If I take a walk for ten minutes after filling the gas and chain oil tanks, we both start up after cooling off and run for another tank.

A mirror, in the chainsaw is an image of me; getting older and taking more breaks, relaxing more.  I used to just power through work and not pay attention to overheating or getting tired.  Now the chainsaw reminds me to take breaks and walk around.  Feel the fragrant breeze weaving through the trees and over the ferns.  I could take the saw to the mechanic or me to the doctor.  We would find that aging is a simply complex process and gracefully reminds us to give attention to the seasons of machines and people.  This is not disease, only natural timing.  

I don't want to replace the chainsaw with a newer model that will run all day.  Neither do I want to replace my body with a newer model that will run all day.  We can both age gracefully and be thankful for these mirrors.  The chainsaw showed me its true nature the other day.  In it I saw timelessness.  We will make more firewood together, and keep the driveway and sunscape clear while we last.  After that, the sky is boundless for both of us.

Posted by michael

Plum Blossom, Rhubarb

Plum blossoms swell in the late winter rain showers.  This is not the Asian plum species so revered in Chinese, Korean, Japanese poetry for its resistance to winter and symbolism of strength through adversity and patience. 

This plum blossom is without poetry tradition.  It unfolds without history of poetics, timeless.  It is simply a late winter blossom filled with the promise of longer days and fruit in summer.  So easily expresses the poetry of wild space; without words, concepts, and meaning.   

Near to plum is rhubarb; a quintessential spring tonic.  Powerful medicine for waking up the system and aligning with Spring.  These leaves are small, young, and compressed; like green lightning.  Everything begins in the small; easily changing what needs to change and leading to bigger events of season.

Posted by michael

Science And Thought

Science is a method for the systematic observation of phenomena and testing of hypotheses.  Successful tests organize knowledge and make predictions about mechanisms and outcomes of action to and from objects.  Science assumes logic and rational explanation of testable hypothesis concerning quantifiable objects.  Objects are subject to the laws of physics and chemistry and are composed of sub-atomic and atomic particles, which are further aggregated into molecules and inorganic and organic structures.  Inorganic structure includes physical existence without life, while organic structure includes life composed of organs, organisms, and ecosystems.  The absence of quantifiable objects precludes the use of scientific methods and requires the use of metaphysics and other forms of philosophy for study and understanding.  Space and energy cannot be studied directly by science because they lack object nature.  If space or energy are objectified for scientific study, then they are not observed in their true nature.  

Thought is pure and not objectified.  Some scientists assume that thought is the sum total of chemical reactions in the brain.  However, this assumption cannot be scientifically tested because thought is not an object and is not subject to the laws of physics and chemistry.  While thought perceives objects, it is not an object itself, as evidenced by imagination, dreams, spirituality, irrationality, intuition, opinion, and other types of imaging activity.  Thought appears to take a seat as consciousness in the brain or awareness in the heart.  However thoughts cannot be captured and contained, like objects in the world.

Science attempts to objectify the world to test and predict its function and meaning.  This is a powerful method for organizing knowledge and controlling the irrational and unknown; dispelling superstition.  Thought is free and not required to follow the laws of physical nature.  With thought we have art, religion, politics, metaphysics, and culture; all ways of expressing the irrational and feeling or rejecting the compassion of space.  

Attempts to scientifically study thoughts and phenomenon that cannot be objectified or do not follow the laws of physics and chemistry violate the assumptions of science and cannot produce valid results.  These attempts waste valuable research money and time, appearing to lend a pseudoscientific patina to otherwise dubious efforts.  We should not confuse science with the cultural and spiritual aspects of our being. 

Space is the source of science and thought.  Everything is included in space and nothing is apart from space.  There is only one space and it has not been created or destroyed.  Space is not an object and every object and thought comes from space.  Space is infinite compassion and love because it touches and supports every other object and thought in loving embrace, never letting go, always supporting without bias or neglect. 

Be careful to include space in your thoughts and actions.  Without space you are compressed, depressed, and listless, feeling a heavy heart that knows the darkness of objects.  The darkness of objectivity is dispelled by the light of space.  Light emerges from space through the mirrors of stars and other sources of illumination and reflects off of objects to give them definition, context, and meaning.  Science is powerful, modern predictable form.  Thought is formless, luminous, and fluid.  Space is timeless and unchanging.  We are all of these, not be be confused with each other.

Posted by michael

Place-Based Learning On Beaver Creek Marsh

The importance of place in culture became clear to me as I attempted to outline the early aboriginal inhabitants and their culture near Beaver Creek marsh from sources of ethnography and archaeology for the area.  Few sources of information are available on the Alsea people that lived here before European and Asian settlement.  I listened to the stories that the marsh tells every day living here.  The living Alsea people and their culture have been lost in the passing of time.  Their stories live in nature.  Their possible ancestors may live among the Siletz Confederated Tribe.  

A new book “The People Are Dancing Again” by Charles Wilkinson (2010) documents the history of the Siletz Confederated Tribe of western Oregon.  The Siletz Tribe was originally composed of people from numerous village cultures in western Oregon and northern California that were forced onto the Siletz reservation in 1856.  In aboriginal times, each individual village had political authority and was autonomous.  The ethnographic concept of tribes was not supported.  The villages were exogamous, with men taking brides from other villages and the women becoming citizens of their new places.  In the beginning chapter on aboriginal village societies, Wilkinson gives a clear explanation of the importance of place in culture:

“The village as a place carries powerful emotional content.  The multidimensional Athapaskan word duh-neh means “the people of the place” and also encompasses “the blood line”.  It is “the place where your family has always been buried.”  There is no comparable concept in the English language, and I have seen Siletz people strain to articulate the intensity and specificity of the term.  The village is at once concrete and dynamic.  While it is a fixed place on the land and the people are tied to it, the population changes because of births, deaths, and the law of intermarriage, causing some people (women) to move from one village to another.  Yet for both men and women the tie to the village is immutable.  Duh-neh: This is the one place where a person is from, where the ancestors are buried.  This is the only place, the heart place.  There can be no other place.”

This heart place is the singular place where we learn from our elders, teach our children, and return to in our death.  It gives us the connection to living that sustains our breath and life, sparks our imagination and gives us the stories that support our narrative to explain existence and give meaning.  We all come from the one place, which can be different for each of us.  This one in the many and many in the one is an important recognition of how to get along with each other and the world.  Place-based learning is an effort to bring the resources of place to education and learning.  In this way culture can be made stronger by linking with wildness and the wisdom of nature that is heart place.

Posted by michael

Meeting I: Ego Lost It's Way

The picture shows some bones of a beaver beside Beaver Creek marsh, picked clean by scavengers.  This can happen when death naturally appears after life.  Where did the beaver go?  Did you stop to think about who an I is?  This thing that we refer to as I, the ego, is a slippery thing.  We talk about I this and my that, but we really have no idea what we are referring to.  Can you see I?  Sure we see I as parts of something; hands, feet, toes, ears, eyes, brain, heart.  But we never see I, only parts.  Even in a mirror, the image is reversed.  I constantly changes, like a river.  

There is a contradiction in our thinking.  We say that we are independent objects, beings.  At the same time we say that we are subjects living in a cause and effect world.  But we don't really believe this.  For cause and effect to work, subjects, objects, and conditions must be connected.  Our claimed I independence places us apart from others and worldly conditions and denies cause and effect.  We have endless arguments and discussions about opinions based on false assumptions of independence.  Cause and effect only works when there is interdependence; when things are related and connected.  This relationship of connections occurs through the medium of space.  We are all contained in space.  We are space; ask a physicist.  Just like you cannot see I, you cannot see space.  You know what space is and find it everywhere.  It holds you like a warm mother, connecting you to all other creatures.  When you reject space as a nihilistic vacuum, you reject interdependence and cause and effect.  You are alone in egoville.  

Because we are dependent on space, we are connected to all other beings and conditions.  Maybe our false assumption of independence is the source of so much sickness and fear.  We isolate ourselves from others and from the consequences of our actions.  Relax and enjoy luminous space which contains all stars, sun and moon, beings, and your thoughts as they cascade down the mountainside of your illusory ego that lost its way in independence.  

The beaver lived and died in Beaver Creek marsh.  Space did not make a distinction of this beaver, and simply accepted it into open arms.  The beaver appeared, remained, and dissolved in space; wonderful, warm, illuminating space which comforts us all with its unbounded love and compassion.

Posted by michael

Bobcat Mind

Look upon the body as unreal,
an image in a mirror,
the reflection of the moon in water.
Contemplate the mind as formless,
yet bright and pure.
Not a single thought arising,
empty, yet perceptive;
still, yet illuminating;
complete like the great emptiness,
containing all that is wonderful.
-   Han Shan Te'-Ch'ing, 1600

Posted by michael

On Wildness

There is a tame, and also a wild, side to the human mind. The tame side, like a farmer's field, has been disciplined and cultivated to produce a desired yield. It is useful but limited. The wild side is larger, deeper, more complex, and though it cannot be fully known, it can be explored... It has landscapes and creatures within it that will surprise us. It can refresh us and scare us. Wild mind reflects the larger truth of our ancient selves, of our ancient animal and spiritual selves... The wildness gives heart, courage, love, spirit, danger, compassion, skill, fierceness, and sweetness -- all at once --

~ Gary Snyder, Writers and the War Against Nature

Posted by michael

The Spirit Of Christmas

The spirit of Christmas is a jolly fellow who comes from a long line of relatives in the book of mythology.  There is much debate and opinion about the merits of telling children that a later day relative of St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, exists and brings gifts to good children on Christmas day.  Other serious adults declare the season of "bah humbug" and turn in for a long winter nap.  This arguing and discussion is the meandering of adults lost in the seeming solidity of their vision of things as they are.  Of course Santa Claus and all of his helpers and relatives exist and continue to appear in this season of winter.  Look around you and see the people scurrying around thinking and emoting about all of their religious, spiritual, and secular traditions, as they procure good foods, drink, and presents for all they care about.  We all embody the spirit of Christmas, whatever our creed and affiliations, when we turn our minds to the light and benefit of warm heart and kindness.  Santa Claus is the magical manifestation of our thoughts and actions.  He is a reminder to expand our horizons.  When we recognize the space of generosity, we are filled with kinship to all of the family who goes before us and reminded of the generations to come.  We can give them the legacy of clean air, water, energy (fire), and land.   

It is clear to me that charity, generosity, compassion, and love are lights that fill this season with the joy of renewal and boundless aspirations for peace in hearts and minds.  Santa Claus is but one manifestation of this season greeting.  May we all enjoy and appreciate the boundless gratitude that warms our hearts in the middle of winter, when the sun begins its bright return to the summer ease and warmth. 

Posted by michael   

Shaping Intention

One of the advantages of being with the marsh is the shaping of intention.  This cryptic statement exposes the power of the marsh and other natural places.  Being in nature, next to the marsh, beach, or walking in the forest lifts our spirit and mood.  This lifting arises from the wonder and suspension of thinking that we experience in the presence of what cannot be immediately understood.  Our intention is lifted with the mystery of the marsh.  Seeking to know the marsh, we name and locate items that compose the marsh.  These objects change with the season and weather, and the marsh remains, an unknown, mystery that is clearly apparent.

Intention is important because it is the stage in our thinking where we can control outcomes.  Once thought has left the stage of intention, it is surrounded and shaped by material objects and tends to be limited by their potential.  Intention is only limited by the heart.  If our intention is positive, then positive outcomes will result.  If our intention is neutral or negative, than neutral or negative outcomes will result.  The mystery of marsh and other natural places gives us the space to shape positive intentions.  When we are surrounded by negative intentions, such as aggression, greed, attachment, jealousy, and fear, then our lives are filled with objects and outcomes that reflect these intentions.

In this season of light, where we all celebrate the winter solstice and the returning of the light through various religious or spiritual rituals, take time to shape intention towards love, kindness, peace, and good will towards all beings.  Walking with nature can facilitate this intention-shaping by reminding us that we are part of a powerful world that depends on intention and the outcomes that flow from intention.  Our most powerful actions are the shaping of intention, as they control the placement of objects and outcomes in our lives.  

When we are feeling good about ourselves and the world, then everybody is a friend.  When our mood is low and dark, then enemies and trouble stalk our spirits.  We have the choice.  Shape positive intention before being carried away by negative emotion.  Keep forming positive intention until the world is filled with positive thoughts and outcomes.  They will shape the future and our legacy. 

Posted by michael

Reflections And Perception

We rely on reflections to see.  Everything that we see appears as objects, beginning as light reflected from object mirrors into our eyes.  We assume from habit that objects are real and this assumption is reinforced by other perceptions of sound, touch, taste, and smell.  All of these perceptions through other senses are also reflections; sound waves, neurotransmitter waves, and smell and taste particle waves.  

Reflections come with various levels of distortion associated with the wave structure of their transmission.  When we look at objects and their reflections in water, we see all of these aspects.  An object directly appears as solid and not wavering.  The reflected object appears as wavering, dependent on the effect of breezes on the water surface.  The reflected object color also changes, dependent on the water colors.  Who is to say which object is more real?  The object and its reflection are both reflections that have different qualities.  We assign realness based on our visual biases learned from years of observation.  Are we seeing a real object?

Our real object appears to be a reflection that we favor, while we reject the wavering reflection.  This ambiguity of real and illusory reflections is the great pathway into our true nature.  We can find the singularity where the object and its reflection meet.  Look along the bank of a creek or pond.  There is the seamless transition between object and its wavering reflection.  They are both reflections, joined by the continuity of light received from each, into our eyes and then transmitted to our brains by waves of neurotransmitters, reflections of nerve energy.  Our true nature lives in that line between reflections, where symbol and meaning meet.  The nature cannot be seen and is experienced directly in a continuum of awareness, not bound by reflections and their mirror surfaces.

Relaxing our perceptual biases gives us the freedom of wildness.  Our thoughts are free to dissolve into the warm sunlight that may be hidden behind the clouds of seeming objects; mirrors of light intended for perceptions.  Objects are mirrors and we are echos of reflection from those mirrors.  The singularity of the shoreline, the horizon of our perception, the surface of the mirrors, is our consciousness; that which brings together object, subject, and perception.  In all these echos, how can one hold an opinion?  We are all the free play of light and energy.

We experience timeless awareness when our consciousness recognizes the unity of object, subject, and perception.  This recognition happens on the singularity of the mirror surface which is unchanged by the reflections emerging from it.  That mirror surface is everywhere and we call it space.

Posted by michael

Sea Foam

Sea foam may appear when the surf is up at Ona Beach, where Beaver Creek flows out into the ocean.  The foam can look like snow, creatures, clouds, and other ephemeral phenomena.  Foam can give us a look at the invisible world of water currents and wind pressure.  Waves stir up the water and inject air into a foamy exuberance full of joy.  The foam moves over the top of the water in breezes and with the water, scurrying back and forth across the beach with incoming and outgoing waves and up and down the creek.  Then as quickly as it comes, the foam can disappear as surf calms down and the weather turns mild and sunny.  

Posted by michael

Harvest Time Musings

I just returned from a trip to the Yakima, WA area, with its beautiful tawny hills shaped like crouching mountain lions, and I discovered some things in an old travel journal about landscape.  This is a quote from a show I saw the tail end of in Anchorage, Alaska, about five years ago.  Andy Goldsworthy had done an art installation there, and the show was a collection of small photos and journal entries documenting his ephemeral work. http://www.rwc.uc.edu/artcomm/web/w2005_2006/maria_Goldsworthy/philosophy.html  

“The landscape is a skin, permeable and fluid, fragile and wild...Explore the landscape as a body, breathing, fragile, punctured and worn.”

Landscape lays the groundwork, or the structure, for what comes after.  The landscape appears on the one hand to remain the same for long periods of time, when actually it is constantly reforming itself to match one’s perceptions.  Erosion, light, growth, decay, movement, seasonal, and occasionally catastrophic, events interplay with our psychological, sensual, and emotional responses to it.  I’ve watched the landscape of my heart change over the years.  The subarctic Alaskan landscape where I grew up used to call to me strongly when I was in my twenties and had recently left it.  Gradually that pull has lessened and transferred to Oregon where I’ve lived for thirty years.  The landscape of my heart keeps evolving and expanding, and is closely linked to memory.  It contains elements of my Alaskan roots, vague imprints of the lands important to my Scandinavian ancestors, and a bit of every place I have ever lived or experienced, brought to where I am now.

My old journal then recorded my reading of the book, The Secret Life of Dust.  It talked about billions of tons of dust continually cycling through the atmosphere--dust of every being that ever lived, every element, even the stars--from the beginning of time.  It changes one’s thinking about particles and the way things are composed.  Objects appearing solid, but really made up mostly of space.  Understanding how the elements of our world are put together, and how easily they are taken apart.  Impermanence.  Change.  “All we are is dust in the wind.”

At this time of year, when the winter storms begin and blow the leaves off the trees, the weather and the landscape trigger the natural impulse for inner reflection, to look deeper at the same time as being able to see deeper, down to the bones of the landscape, and beyond.

“The days grow short.

The sky speaks of winter.

Change hangs in the air like

          a question mark. 

The harvest is in, the season

          of waiting begins.

This is the tender time of the year

          when everything drops away.

Trees are left bare, only skeletons

            of continuity remain.

The impermanence of things is

            so visible, so unavoidable.

The winter heart feels the lengthening

            darkness and the turning of the sun.

We cannot yet know the gifts

            that darkness brings.”

----adapted from The Golden Time, Stephanie Kaza

Posted by jackie.

Clearly Apparent Yet Not Existent

The creek flows through the marsh and out into the ocean, surrounded and suffused by space.  There are many examples here of what is clearly apparent yet not existent.  We can call these examples metaphors and symbols for the nature of things.  We objectify our existence, separating ourselves from other objects and beings and declare us and them.  Objects and subjects are like a creek in its bed, wind in space, waves on water, reflections in mirrors, clouds in sky, and dreams in sleep.  Objects and subjects are illusory as they have no independent, lasting self-nature and are interdependent in a web of cause and effect.  This very dependence is the appearance that we call object and make philosophy and science with.  Since we are not omniscient, we are not able to see all of these causes and conditions.  We believe strongly in the independence of objects, as if they were separate and distinguishable, and say that they have self-nature.  We especially have a strong sense of ego; that we are independent, with self-will. 

The ego is like the emperor in the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.  Two (duality) tailors (illusion) weave clothes (objects) for the emperor (ego) that are so light and fine (desirable) as to appear invisible (no cause and effect), especially to anyone too stupid or incompetent (shame) to appreciate their quality.  A child (original nature) eventually saw the emperor in his new clothes and recognized that he was naked.  But the emperor could not acknowledge this nakedness (awareness) and continued on, walking through the streets (the world) with the illusion of his new clothes.        

How deluded we are.  By maintaining this separation of subjective self and objective other, we fail to see what is.  We grasp on to solidity of self and objects as if they did not constantly change and depend on each other.  Even if we recognize change, we do not believe that it applies to our precious self and others.  We are afraid when objects change, as this represents loss and gain of something desirable or abhorrent.  We fail to see that birth, life, and death are a continuum, with the magical properties of spontaneous appearance and disappearance of consciousness that are dependent upon subject and objects.  This cycle rests upon unchanging awareness, which we sense but cannot see.  We are this awareness, which gives rise to the display of subjects and objects; just like waves forming and dissolving into water, reflections arising and disappearing in mirrors, clouds forming and dissolving into sky, and dreams appearing and disappearing in sleep.  The water, mirrors, sky, and sleep are metaphors for awareness and are not changed by this display.  Recognizing the illusory nature of display, we can return to our nature and be complete. 

When we are not attached to our conclusions, concepts, and training about existence, then we are free to experience our nature in the vast ocean of space which is mind.  We easily move through the causes and conditions that surround us.  Then we become what we are, omniscient awareness in the unending web of interdependence.  Everything is as it should be in the unending dance of change.  Relax and enjoy every emotion, thought, and perception as the illusions that they are, without the anxiety of grasping and fixation.

Posted by michael

Beaver Creek Art Show

Scenes from the opening night of the art show at the Newport Visual Arts Center, Upstairs Gallery.  Paintings, ceramics, photographs, pastels, and sculpture are on display through October, 2010.  Five artists, Sandy Roumagoux, Liisa Rahkonen, Nancy Jane Reid, Jackie Niemi, and Michael Davis show works inspired by the Beaver Creek State Natural Area.  The natural mind of wildness is invoked in the gallery, which is filled with light and life in the colors of marsh.



Reflections reveal our nature, as light is returned to us from objects, waking and dreaming;  all are mirrors.  We name these reflections perception, emotion, and thought.  We forget that everything is clearly apparent, but not existent.  We objectify that which is simply reflection and call it the world.  At the marsh, we are real and bask in the glow of the singularity that is our love for all beings and places.  We are alive and know it in our hearts.

Posted by michael

Patient Watching

USFWS public domain

Thirty years ago, I had a conversation with Range Bayer about what he calls patient watching.  We talked about the interesting and different behavior that can be seen when observations of animals are made over a relatively long period of time.  Our conversation had a profound effect on me.  Going on to study fish behavior, I used what Range had said about patient watching.  Recently, Range and I talked about patient watching again and remembered that this method is indeed a powerful way to see the world.  Range used patient watching in his studies of great blue herons.

In classical behavior studies, the observer may watch an individual for short periods of time, generally 15 minutes or less.  This is called focal study and several individuals may be observed to gather replicate data for statistical analysis of mean individual behavior in a population.  The watching is done with an eye towards recording occurrence and duration of previously determined stereotypical behavior such as agonistic displays, feeding, and courtship.  This behavior is often collected into an ethogram and data is recorded that reinforces these conceptual frameworks. 

What happens when the observer watches an individual for an hour, or several hours, or through tidal cycles for up to 12 hours?  We no longer simply see stereotypical behavior that was preconceived.  We begin to see atypical, non-stereotypical animal behavior in the context of their environment.  We see how the individual responds to constantly fluctuating environmental conditions and in relation to other animals that may enter or exit the perception space of the focal individual.  This diversity of behavior is a new window on the animal and is a rich source of hypotheses and eventual explanatory information about how the animal behaves.  These patient watching studies are difficult, as they require a good deal of patience, sitting quietly for long periods of time while maintaining attention on the focal animal.  Try sitting and watching the same bird for an hour.  You must be comfortable, maintain attention, and make reliable notes for later reference and quantification.  This is the natural activity of one who meditates.  A great blue heron is a master of this mediation in the marsh, while looking for food and avoiding conflict with other animals.    

When we use patient watching, we choose not to look specifically for predetermined behavior, relaxing assumptions about what we might see.  We choose to openly watch for any behavior that may occur, repeatedly or infrequently, over a wide range of environmental and social conditions for the animal.  There are few, if any, patient watching behavior studies documented in the scientific literature.  I am making an effort to find these sorts of studies, as they are a unique contribution to knowledge of animal behavior and its meaning in ecology.  Patient watching studies can give the big picture for animals.

How can we use patient watching in our lives?  We can gain perspective on the events and circumstances of our lives by seeing through the lens of extended time.  By not automatically applying short-term conceptual assumptions to our observations, we can begin to see directly and sense the underlying forces that shape our actions and thoughts.  Imagine the potential power of seeing the wider field of connections among emotions, objects, people, and animals.  This may be a new source of inspiration and wealth, akin to the power of wildness to bring us contentment and well-being.  It would certainly help us discern the differences among conceptual seeing and direct seeing that often cloud our knowledge.  Maybe we would not be so quick to jump to conclusions about our world.  This could help reduce bias and prejudice.

Posted by michael