Rather we know it or recognize it or not, our own nature, as well as the pursuit of all things found in nature is to identify with what is obtainable. To make things better than they currently exist. It is universal and no one owns it. It is when we think we do, it becomes unattainable for us. With it we become the traveler looking for something we call the unknown.
What we learn is what contributes to our eternal spirit. To what the shaman told us thousands of years ago and has remained unchanged over time. It is that to reach what seems as the unattainable, we must first be willing and able to change. Why the ancients worked to perfect what would come to be known as the I Ching, The Book of Change. Because within and through it they knew.
What they learned first was that everything found in nature, changes or dies. Including us. Short term change not tied to nature’s best interests dies too. Nature cannot support what does not change over time. If you study the great historians and philosophers throughout time… recorded history, what they said and knew first-hand was that we are here in pursuit of what we define as what we think is obtainable. That we obtain by attaining… not what we find in the material world, but as spirit. Something Buddhism has stressed for millennia.
It is when we think we have discovered this connection to what Emerson called the transcendental, or as Joseph Campbell called our bliss, or even what Chuang Tzu called the Perfected Man, then we learn that the journey does not lie outside of us but inside, and importantly that it is not where we are but who we are that matters in the end… That we want to travel on the road that takes us there with our memories intact of who we have always been that help to take us there. The pursuit of what is deemed as the attainable… just think about it.
Why did our ancestors come to America except for something that was to be known as manifest destiny? To leave from wherever they came to a world where they could create something new for themselves. It’s how our mind works in what can be called the never-ending story. Hard as we may try, we are not here to stop or hold back another’s dream of what they too perceive as the pursuit of happiness to something they see as attainable. When our own future counts and depends on their success as well.
Number 56 of the I Ching
The Death of the Chamois
Buckskins tanning in the bright sun light brown almost white from the ram captured on the mountain’s rim only for the delicacy of its tender loins and its superior skin.
No matter the benefits, it is not the capture of game pursued over a long distance that is important. But simply the ultimate pursuit itself. As the hunter respects his prey by only taking what is necessary for his own survival, fulfillment comes with the understanding of one’s place in the universe. Not the lethal release of the arrow.
Pursuing the chamois on the sheer outcropping near the mountain’s top is as difficult as capturing the pheasant in the valley below. Both represent the ultimate challenge and losing against such an able foe is not losing but gaining the respect found to be in nature’s way. The ram only captured because its time has come.
Having overcome the chamois there is a satisfaction in knowing the ram as an equal or better in his own territory. Fully aware of his stature in his environment and what it takes to survive on top of mountains. Always to be looking down at panoramas in every direction.
A innate sense that each step on the craggy outcropping could be his last if improperly placed. However surefooted, he adeptly and safely bounds from rock to rock unconcerned and unafraid.
As a seasoned traveler coming across hunters coming down from higher elevations with their prize, you sense both elation and sadness accompanying the death of the chamois. All is well and as it should be.
An original composition and interpretation of the Chinese classic the I Ching (56 THE TRAVELER / Fire over Mountain). 3/22/94
Leave a Reply