The Fox, Meditation
I can think of nothing more beneficent, the image of a possible world than that of two foxes that I recently observed. The two animals represent for me a ideal state of being. A full-on tactile awareness of life, one’s own and that of the surrounding environment. Foxes do not use words. Their manner of communication, is probably body-language- expression, and a repertoire of simple sounds. The upside of this “limitation” is the fox is unlikely to be a neurotic animal. Not so with humans. Writing this, before me individuals of a wide range of walks of life, of circumstance –a majority obsessively stare into the little screen in their hands as they wait for their Starbucks coffee order. That is the way it must be. Or as is said in the Buddhist tradition, you cannot pick up just one end of the stick. The capacity for using symbols to retain experience in memory, to enrich the imagination also entails addiction to youtube videos, to the inane thought that people you’ve never met, are your “friends” on facebook, and to building monuments to ego at great public expense, such as the Thompson Center in Chicago. A fox is not prone to such errors with its immediate awareness.
The fox is no pet. I could never approach this mother and her kit. I’ve not seen a fox hunt a squirrel or take a rabbet. I know that the event has to be violent and bloody. For the prey life ends quickly, as if in a nightmare. There is wildness in the fox unconcealed by culture. There is a wildness in us humans as well. We obfuscate, and pretend to ourselves. In our subterranean regions, beneath the layers of music, impressive architecture, etc, —the old marauding Viking lives, the slave trader waits. Seems to me that we have transposed our wildness into the structures of our institutions. We give lip service to justice, but our allegiances are to our tribe. Everything else is subterfuge, misdirection, a feint.
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.excerpt – Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
