Relearning to see with fresh eyes

What’s this, what’s that, what do I hear, what bird is that, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. And in all the wondering I can find myself thinking, what’s the use in all this wrangling, where does the looping about for sense and meaning take me, does it make anything more of what already is, or does it in fact, take me away from it all?

This is a line of inquiry that has been coming up a lot lately in conversations with friends – which are really just exchanges of wonder and wandering, or parallel meanderings and thinking out loud.

“Do you know what this bird song is, do you know what that plant is, what breed of chicken is that, what’s the name of that flower?”

So many questions, behind which sit other more probing ones around our motivation, our compulsion, our insatiable desire for more knowledge – why, why do we need to know, what purpose does it serve, and what would happen if we let go of the urge for more and allowed what is to simply be?

Knowledge is power – and power causes pain

While a little information can facilitate understanding, too much knowledge can muddy the view, and in the worst case scenario, tip us into the realms of the harms that come from the urge to control, manipulate and possess what we assume we have a right to, by virtue of the power of knowledge, power being that double-edged sword that cuts both ways.

Daoism and the Dharma speak to this issue well, reminding us of what it means to live in harmony with what matters, rather than making a fuss- and a ruin – of everything.

Deng Ming-Dao aptly frames The Way (i.e., The Tao) as one of noninterference, necessarily pointing out the obvious in his book of Daily Meditations, 365 Tao:

“The earth is overrun by investigators and engineers. The wilderness is made vulgar with the noise of tourists. We don’t need their thermometers and saws. We don’t need bridges and monuments. In the context of Tao, this is to violate the earth with human ambition and to crawl over the landscape like flies over fresh fruit. Instead, we should simply walk through this mysterious world without being a burden to it.”