more on hierarchy

in my last post i tried to explain why “hierarchy” as a way of thinking will harm not help us.

to say hierarchical thinking is not expedient is not to call it incorrect.

this is:

Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh

“and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.”–but i have the potential to see and love. “how to love” explains this. insofar as there is “we,” insofar as there are individuals, there are “seeds of good” and “seeds of evil,” as thich nhat hanh says, in each of us. “good” here, is the practicing of love. these seeds are watered by our parents, our cultures, our ways of thinking about things or “mental formations” as they are called in buddhist philosophy. seeds are an apt metaphor, because they represent potential.  we cannot “make” others good; we can only strive to help them actualize their potential for good.

yet if this so, if some people, like the sea pirate, gravitate in their lives towards doing harm, while others at least try to avoid harm, and still others try to help and heal, how can there not be hierarchy? are not some people “better” or “greater” or “more deserving” than others? was jesus not superior to the common thieves with whom he was crucified?

how can “I” be both the member of the politburo and the man in the forced labor camp? the mayfly and the starving child? ignorant and heartless and wise and compassionate?

there is only one consciousness. (if you’re not convinced, please try to convince me otherwise.) the “I” in thich nanh hanh’s poem is this consciousness, as it is you, as it is me. materiality gives consciousness many shapes so that there can be meaning–something called experience. these shapes are possibilities in the forms of people, landscapes, emotions, entropy, gravity, squirrels, cotton candy, and frozen toilets. anything that could ever be nameable or thinkable.  (now would be a good time for you to (re-)read “empathy and visuality”. “to experience” requires a direct object, and for this reason, meaning is a soliloquy.  God loving “her back to herself,” to use philip pullman’s expression. of course pullman was talking about lyra and her daemon, her soul. he and i are describing the same phenomenon.

amongst the infinite forms that sentience takes are the sensation-experiences we bracket as “pain” and “joy.” i experience something called “joy” because i have seen or felt suffering. “my joy and pain are one.” i must bracket that which is not to have that which is. cold for hot, death for life. i’m not being poetic. it’s just true.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

when i realize what i am, that i am all of you, even the yous i hate, the yous i look down on and the yous who make me feel small and silly and worthless, then i cannot help but feel only love-empathy-compassion for everything i am. i am superior to no one and nothing. i am inferior to no one and nothing. if i do good, i know that the individual i seem to be is not to be congratulated; the soliloquy is to be congratulated. the soliloquy makes all things as it is all things. my seeds of good have been watered. if you do only harm, i know i am not your better. the word “better” ceases to make sense when we wake up.