I Can’t Breathe !
All things which have a consciousness
depend on their breath.
If the breath is not ample,
it is not the fault of heaven.
Heaven provides breath day and night
without ceasing but [humankind]
closes up their passages.
The womb encloses an empty space;
but the mind finds delight
in its natural movements.
If the house is not spacious enough,
the wife and mother-in-law argue;
If the mind is not ample enough,
the six faculties of perception
will be in collision.
The great forests, the hills and mountains
draw people because they are inexhaustible
for their spirit.
Zhuangzi trans. Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong, Book 26 External Thing
A dao oriented attitude, like a compass needle seeks true north from observation of nature. A bedrock principle: homo sapiens are “of nature.” What we mean by “nature” is the earthly manifestation of the cosmic. The organizing force of the birth and death of stars is nothing less than a presence all around and within us. You are nature. The cosmos is within us.
Breath, inhalation and suspiration is the rhythm of all being. The spaciousness required, the essential for integrity of all being, from rocks to individuals – ought not to be restricted.
How often do I constrict the give and take of a relationship? Perhaps an ill-advised cross word! Or maybe that small but defined gesture of disdain which is nearly a reflex… Whether a calculated expression of social superiority or the eruption of habit, the gesture or word amounts to the same: enclosure of another human being, a strangulation… And such as this takes many forms. A truncation of natural movement can come in the form of military aggression, war. Or perhaps by weaponizing trade, steep tariffs are imposed to weaponize trade to punish a competitor. What about directing an internal police force, banning for exile stigmatized individuals?
Such actions and policies are as if hands are tightening, strangling around someone’s neck,…
Let’s just breathe! Nature breathes.
2 thoughts on “I Can’t Breathe !”
Despite the strangulation of our society by a madman, who is supported by the sycophantic minions who surround him, our ability to breathe freely is still greater than most humans around the world, at least at the moment. In a rational world, we would all have that luxury, to find our own paths as long as those paths did not impinge on the freedoms of others.
I often wonder if the likes of Trump, Putin, XI, el-Cici, Maduro, Erdogan, et al are actually a part of nature’s unconscious attempts to rehabilitate the Earth by destroying the human parasites from its surface. There are a number of instances where a mammalian species, on the occasion of its overpopulation, will stop eating or will infanticide the young. Is this what is happening to the human race? Are we entering a mode of self-destruction based on some naturally induced and long buried instinct? Probably not, but kind of an interesting thesis.
Certainly context matters. As nature degrades more and more, the accumulated consequence of ignorance, also the shear numbers of our species which desire a level of support that outruns the capacity of soil and water… These as well as the threat of human violence is fertile ground for the rise of a strongman leader. We are seeing an increase of this and a recession of democracy.
Is this natures way of culling the herd? I think if circumstances worsen many will reasonably think this is exactly what it all means.