Moving on

The abandoned bulldozer from the 1930's sits near the water by the crumbling lime kiln.  Its paint is flaking, but the tracks have not entirely corroded even after all this time.  The 'dozer is one of dozens of machines left behind when the industry here dried up.  When it was in use, the bulldozer was regularly maintained, lubricated and even washed.  Now it has become part of the landscape, visible from a distance as a silhouette on this misty day.

I walk past this machine every day.  Today, without really thinking why, I approached the 'dozer and put my hands on the large steel blade that had moved so much earth.  It felt cold, and steady.  I am not a tree-hugger, but I have hugged trees.  It occurred to me that possibly no-one had touched this machine with this seemingly unwarranted attempt at empathy before, and I could feel that recognition move through my skin.

When its utility was at an end, this machine was left behind.  To many, it is a symbol of our recklessness and greed - a machine designed to level the earth and remove whatever is in its way.  But this machine was built, one bolt at a time.  Human ingenuity created it, and it is not the bulldozer's fault we like to think we have risen above our past.

We do walk away from people and things that don't serve any longer.  People have walked away from me and you when our utility diminished in their eyes.  Onward and upward we have moved, sometimes looking back with embarrassment at the things that brought us to the next place.  But it was never the next place that encouraged retrospection.  Here today, with my hands on this machine that is not ever going to go anywhere again I begin to feel...an integration.  The sickening feeling of having looked within myself for resources I can exploit, that others may find useful...to quantify my qualities.  It is not something I can do with the same enthusiasm any longer.

I won't try to argue for the sentience of a machine.  But I do feel something in the armour of its blade, and a sense of nostalgia sitting in its seat, looking at the old dials and gauges.  This machine is useless now.  So I just sat with it for no reason, as I did as kid with the old truck in our yard, looking at the dials, pressing the pedals, on a misty day by the water in an abandoned lime quarry.

YogaGlo patent - how far is too far?

The recent granting of a patent to Yogaglo - a business that offers online yoga classes - has created some controversy.  To yoga folk, it seems that protecting a certain way of offering yoga is at odds with the general idea of yoga - union, not separation.  Some critics of the patent state that this time it has “gone too far” - that although they see value in intellectual property rights, Yogaglo has overstepped, in some way.

The core issue to me not whether Yogaglo has gone too far, because the answer to that  question simply depends on where your interests lie.  The core issue to me is not whether  intellectual property is a good idea, but whether the idea of property at all is a good idea.  

We can trace the idea of property back to the agricultural revolution approximately 10,000 years ago.  Prior to this, humans were mostly nomadic hunters and gatherers.  Tribal societies did not have an idea of property in the sense of owning land.  Rather, as was explained to me by a historian friend of mine, many of the nomadic peoples of what we now call Canada had an idea of - “centers of gravity” - that hunting grounds extended out from oneself in a diminishing gravitational field, so that the land was not owned in perpetuity by anyone, but that individual requirements for nourishment were respected.  This wonderful idea of course was no longer possible to implement after my ancestors in Canada appropriated the land from the indigenous peoples.

It is not clear whether humans went from hunting and collecting to farming in one great movement, or whether it was a slow process.  When you walk through the forest collecting food, there I feel  an innate sense of gratitude and wonder at the abundance given us.  Industrial farming now tries to harvest as much as possible from land that has fences around it to protect it, and even the seeds - life itself - are often owned.  There seems to be no recognition of the gift of life here - only expectation.  That is one result of property and ownership.

It might help to pause ask the question “In what ways has ownership been a benefit to mankind?”  Has it been a benefit to:

• Women?
• Slaves?
• The earth?
• Animals?
• Creativity?
• Freedom?

How many lives have been lost through the final step of nationalistic expansion?  Is war not a tool to gain more property?

The wonderful technology of yoga was created before the idea of formal intellectual property rights existed.  Yoga cross-fertilized itself through the free sharing of ideas, and philosophies became stronger for it.  We still have the names and works of the sages responsible for some of the articulations of yoga, and we can thank them in our hearts.   I wonder where we’d be today if Shankara was not able to borrow and re-organize ideas from earlier sages for fear of being sued?  Copyright - literally the right to copy - only came into being after the invention of the printing press, and copyright was limited then to just a few years.  That has changed radically now.  You can make a good living as a lawyer today buying the rights to patents and then suing those who might infringe on those patents in their creation of something new.

So, many of us are infuriated at this next step into ownership Yogaglo has taken.  But it is just another step in a long journey into separation.  As the author and  speaker Charles Eisenstein has pointed out -When you no longer look around you and can say “This is me!” - you are motivated to say “This is mine”.

Life feeds on life

You eat breakfast, and breakfast becomes you - the food turns into tissue.  Your breakfast fed on something too, before you ate it and it became you.  Life feeds on life.  Vegetarians may want to reduce the harm they cause sentient beings by not eating animals - a noble desire. Vegans take it further.  But plants too, are sentient.  Some would suggest not eating plants either, or only eating the food that drops from a living plant. We could follow this non - harming scheme to a logical conclusion, in which we stop eating anything or doing any harm.  We would then die ourselves.  Starvation is a form of suffering too, so by not wanting to cause any harm we still cause harm.  Even turning on a light is adversely affecting the planet and the things living on it.  As is updating your status on Facebook.

Every living thing is eventual compost for something new, and that eventual compost is inherent in the thing that is new.  This is true of things that live and grow, and it seems true of more subtle things, like a way of living, thinking or acting.  New ideas move through phases of germination, immaturity, maturity and eventually they become fodder for yet another idea.  

The desire to reduce harm by not eating farmed animals is wonderful.  We could look at alternative farmed foods, or turn to foraging instead of farmed foods.  But we too, are farmed animals.  We are raised in a controlled environment, only able to live and move in certain areas.  We have also been corralled into certain ways of thinking, that once accepted by most seem to be truth.  Ideas like “Marriage is natural”, “There is an afterlife”, “There are universal moral truths”.  So to a certain degree, many can only conceptualize within the confines of accepted truths.  If those truths are incorrect, or if there are no universal truths, it seems the first order of business would be to find out why we think the way we think rather than acting on thinking that may be incorrect.

It is difficult to think objectively when vested interest is present.  If I identify myself as a yoga teacher, I will probably advocate yoga.  I make my living teaching yoga, so this seems natural.  But there are times when my vested interests influence my objectivity.  It may be true that another form of exercise or mindful work would be better for a potential student, but not having much familiarity with other disciplines, I advocate yoga instead.  I am not being entirely objective, in that case. 

If I identify as a vegetarian, I will tend to defend vegetarianism.  When I look through articles on diet, I may unconsciously gravitate to those articles that support my beliefs about diet.  I may even argue against another point of view before understanding that point of view, or its benefits, or the vested interest that point of view may be coming from.

Perhaps a more objective and more helpful approach would be to admit:

1. We have vested interests
2. What those interests are
3. How those interests might affect our objectivity
4. That we really don’t know it all and we may very well change our minds, ‘cause it has happened before.  

Our current currency crisis

We may be nearing the end of cycle of a set of values and expectations that have created the world we inhabit.  There is a lot of talk about what money is, what value it is based on, and the relevance of alternative currencies as an option to the debt-based money system that has created the necessity to see everything as a potential resource to be exploited.

Many of us understand gold to have “intrinsic” value.  Hence the gold standard as a touchstone of value.  Gold is a precious metal, it can be used to make beautiful jewelry, it is portable and relatively scarce.  These attributes place it well as a metal of high value.  The economist and gold trader Peter Schiff would agree.  But before we go too far in this direction, it might help to ask the question “what is value?”.  

Value creates a graph of desirability. Things of high value would cost more than things of low value.  But we mean value to a human being.  A new Ipad is valuable to most human beings, but not to dogs, and not to humans too old to understand how to use one.

There are collectors of rare things like ancient books who find great value in something others may overlook.  So when we assign value, we must look at what most people (not dogs or cats) find most valuable most of the time.  So value is a best guess, an average.

What is most valuable to most humans most of the time?  I would say things that promote survival and happiness.  Most humans want to live, and to live we all have a shared need in certain essentials.  This also depends on the circumstances of each human.  Someone addicted to cigarettes might value a pack over human contact.  Someone suffering from a painful and incurable disease might value a painless death over all else.  There are many variables, but in general, value is found in:

• Air
• Water
• Sleep
• Food
• Warmth
• Human contact
• Love
• A sense of being valuable

If you put 100 people in a large locked warehouse for the rest of their lives with only these things or the possible means to attain them scattered around, as well as a pile of gold, the people would not gravitate to the gold.  In fact, the gold facilitates none of what is essential to life.  So gold is not intrinsically valuable like water or air.  It is an agreement of value - an agreement that has persisted for a very long time to be sure, but a symbol of value nonetheless.

After some time, years perhaps, these 100 people might seek out raw materials to make art from, and at that point the gold would become more interesting and beautiful things made from gold  - things that could adorn someone to make them more beautiful - might attain value.  Things like water, food and a bed to sleep in might be occasionally traded for gold.  But gold is not intrinsically valuable - it is only valuable in a certain context - that of a society that has enough of the essentials necessary to live comfortably and has extra to allot to something of beauty.  But even then value must be added to the gold in the form of artistry - no one would just carry a gold brick around to look more beautiful.

Intrinsic means to “belong naturally”.  So when we speak of intrinsic value, we mean value that belongs naturally - not value that is added to or created.  Intrinsic value depends on the relationship between that which is valued, and the valuer in order to assign a specific value.  So “intrinsic” requires relationship as well as the qualities of the thing of value.

We are getting down to the true meaning of intrinsic.  Gold, money, jewelry or even the next breath would not have any value if it were not an event held in our awareness.  If I were in a coma, my last breath would not be an event I was aware of.  The Mona Lisa would have no value in the land of the blind.  Bach’s work holds not beauty to the deaf.  Gold is only valuable if others hold the agreement - the awareness - that has a certain value.

So it is awareness itself that holds the highest value, and it is an intrinsic value because awareness is aware - that is its fundamental attribute, one that cannot be removed and does not rely on opinion or agreement.  Even death may not affect awareness itself.  This puts us in an interesting position when offering one’s gift, because your gift, as a form of awareness, is more valuable than money or gold. However, others may not see the value of your gift even when it is ready to be shared, for value to them may still mean only money, gold or things that facilitate survival.

The quip “Do what you love and the money will follow” assumes money is inherently valuable, and the term “love” implies “do that which is full of awareness”.  While it is true there has historically been a correlation between how beautiful (full of awareness) something is and how much it costs, this correlation is becoming more and more tenuous as we move toward the end of our collective agreement that money has value.  Currencies have lost all of their value before, and it will very likely happen again - this time to the currency we are using.

Your gift has inherent value.  Your ability to see the beauty in another and explain what you see to them in terms they understand and can accept is valuable.  Your capacity to listen to someone work through a painful or joyful event and through this process become more aware and mature in their understanding is valuable.  The ability to sit with yourself comfortably without becoming so uneasy with arising memories and emotions you are driven to distract yourself by shopping for things you don’t need, made by someone who does not want to be making what your are buying, brought to you by someone who doesn’t want to drive the truck that brought it there,  sold to you by a cashier who doesn’t want to be there but must, to pay for the things she bought that she doesn’t need....is valuable.  The gifts of awareness lie outside the bounds of what our ancestors may have agreed is valuable.

Resolutions

I am a planner.  I like to know what is going to happen, and I think I’ve got a pretty strong “work ethic”.  But something has changed, and it has been an incremental change, and an invisible one.  I’m probably more adept at what I do to “make a living” than ever before, and at a stage in my life where our culture tells me I should be making preparations for eventual retirement.  Storing away things like money, not taking too many chances.  This is starting to feel more and more wrong.  Even though I’m healthy and strong, my eventual dissolution is on the horizon, and there is nothing I can do about that.  So it seems strange to pretend I should be accumulating when I’m actually dissolving.  This is all conceptual stuff, but what’s happening in me is more than thoughts.

When I allow nothing to happen - no planning, no attempts to coerce the world around me to bend to my desires, no persuading people to do what I think is good for them and also good for me, I experience spaciousness.  It is as if the organs in my body relax.  When I begin to do what I’ve done pretty much my whole life - organize my reality to my own benefit - I experience an uncomfortable tension.  I realize now this tension was always there, and only because of its absence have I recognized it was there.  

I’ve used the same approach to people I’m attracted to.  To see them as some kind of resource that will add to my life.  Of course there are many layers of relationship and there have been many moments of spaciousness even within this way of relating, but it has been in spite of rather than because of it.  The model I have unconsciously been following has never really worked, probably attracted those that were motivated in the same way, and has always ended.

There is something more spacious, more comfortable and real than what I’ve been doing.  I know this in my heart, and I know I’m not the only one to yearn for something more expansive, a life that follows the rhythms of nature rather than a cultivation and control of my nature.  I don’t have an answer, or a philosophy, or a path for this, because all those things imply a final destination that just doesn’t seem to be there.

So for now I’ll try to stay in the spaciousness.  Not because it will get me what I want, not because others should do it to.  Just because it feels pretty good.

Counting things

How to count trees?  What is a tree?  If the definition of tree includes not just what we can see above ground but the soil, roots, relationships both linear and subtle, communication between one tree and another, then when we add another tree, it shares the sun, the water in the soil, the relationships - it does not exist separately.  The trees don’t have an external environment.  Even humans are part of the trees interconnectivity.  

We humans don’t generally feel this.  The source, unity, or heaven we are looking for and have placed in the heavens or somewhere geographically or theoretically away from us is in fact what we refer to as our environment.  However, very literally the earth I walk on is the earth you walk on.  The sun that shines on me shines on you.  Because of our procreative nature we would not exist without each other.  So, referring to what surrounds us as our “environment” says two things.  “My environment”. “My” - that which is not me, that I own or control.  “Environment” - That which surrounds me.  An abstraction.

So when we “count things”, when we quantify, we must first assume the things to be counted are fundamentally separate from one another, or counting would be impossible.    This assumes a separate environment from the counter, as well.  The counter is counting, the counter is not the counted.  In an abstraction like mathematics with clear logical boundaries, 1+1= 2.  In relationships between living beings, as Dr. Douglas Brooks so wonderfully points out, 1+1= 3 - the third element being the relationship between the two things counted. 

If a thing is separate from you, you can choose to relate or not to relate to it.  It is an external.  Relating to it may or may not be in your interest.  Your primary interest, the one that is unspoken and assumed, is in general, you want to continue to live.  So, a sandwich is seen as part of your environment, and so you eat it because it is in your interest.  If you buy the sandwich with money, it is “your” sandwich.  If you make the sandwich from the raw ingredients that surround you - wheat, cheese, tomatoes, possibly a pig -  then it too becomes “your” sandwich.  When you digest the sandwich completely and excrete the “waste” - it is also your waste.  Where is all your poo now?  It is back in "your environment".  It is in the oceans, it is in the soil.  It is becoming a tomato you might again call “yours”.  Is there then an external environment, or just an mental abstraction we agree on?

If a tiger eats you, he must see you as not him.  You also must do this to that which you’d like to eat.  You’d eat a sandwich and even salivate at the thought of eating a BLT, but you could not eat your own living hand, even if you tried to.  Your hand is different than your arm and far from your mouth, but the felt fundamental connection to the rest of you is undeniable.  Your feeling motivates your action, both in the eating of the BLT and in not eating your own hand.  Aron Ralston, the hiker who’s story of being trapped in a canyon, his arm pinned by a boulder, eventually freed himself by breaking off his own hand.  It took him 5 days to realize he could do this.  In his telling of the event, Ralston says that eventually he came to see his trapped hand as an impediment to his survival, something dying and “other” than him.  He was able then to summon the courage to break the radius and ulna bones of his arm and escape.  Ralston saw his trapped hand as separate, and that allowed him to continue to live.

We quantify and separate for good reasons.  This article is not a moral objection to this, simply an illustration of it.  But we often forget that quantification is just an abstraction -  just a tool to allow us to behave in ways that can be beneficial to our interests.  Now that there is almost nothing left of “environment” to make use of, and there are billions and billions of “me”, we may be forced to see the unity underlying the differences.

Keep the cow and add the cat.

When I warm up on the mat

I do the cow, and then the cat.

My spine gets curved and then goes flat.

How to keep the cow, and add the cat?

Cow, you sacred beast with eyes

Large and lumbering, and yes, the flies.

Opportunistic is the cat

Who’s just around for treats and pats

Cow so giving, cat so rude

One give milk, one just eats food.

To find a balance, tit for tat.

How to keep the cow, and add the cat?

One or the other’s not the way

A bit of both, but not a grey

Black and white contrasting...how?

Flowing, like the symbol of the Tao.

So when I warm up on the mat

I do the cow, and then the cat

A little this, then more of that

I keep the cow and add the cat.