Essay #29:  Oh Spacious Sky

The sky perhaps is like a bowl
Turned upside down and hung
Above our heads to keep the whole
From flying off unsprung.                

The Earth spins on its axis at the equator at a speed of approximately 1,037 miles per hour and travels around the sun at a speed of over 66,000 miles per hour.  And yet, from an earthly viewpoint, clouds often move gently or even imperceptibly through the sky.  The sun rises leisurely each day, traces its arc very gradually and dependably across the heavens, and sets so slowly that we have to watch for what seems to be a very long time before the last bits of its orb sink beneath the horizon marking the start of night.

There is that which we know intellectually to be very fast and that which we perceive to be very slow, stable, and dependable.  Occasionally clouds do gather rapidly and move ferociously about the heavens.  They can pelt us with rain, hail, show showers, and send down dangerous lightning.  In such situations we take cover.  We hide from the elements.  We find in a basement or a storm shelter sufficient protection so that we may be reasonably certain to survive the deluge unharmed.  Sometimes, of course, we do not.  Sometimes the elements overtake us and there is loss of life.  Even then, we imagine what might have been different which could have spared the victims.  We consider building more and better shelters.  We devise early warning systems for storms and even for earthquakes.  We believe that we have—at least in principle—the technological prowess to prevent such disasters in the future.  Therefore, on the whole, we consider the Earth to be an hospitable place and find it within our power—again, at least potentially—to make it even more hospitable and safe.

At the same time, it is possible to imagine what the Earth might become like if we continue to apply technology in a narrow-minded and unsustainable way, for example, burning fossil fuels and failing to control the emission of greenhouse gases.  We may reach a point where we have so damaged our atmosphere that our extinction becomes a virtual certainty.  Were we to cross this point, we would not attribute that debacle to the nature of the planet itself but to our abuse of that nature.  We would say—and some are already saying—that we had squandered our birthright.  We might say that we had mortally injured our own mother, Earth, who had given us life, sustained us, and brought us through each season.  Hence, we have some concept of our planet and of the atmosphere as a creative and sustaining orb which feeds us, breathes into us, and draws us to her bosom at night while we sleep.  At a profoundly deep psychological level, we depend on the Earth.  We take for granted the security she provides.  In fact, we have become so used to her sustenance and caring that many of us seem unable even to believe in the possibility of our injuring her.  They are rather like children who go about abusing their mother with impunity, so certain are they of her abiding tolerance and love.

The Earth has tolerated much.  Yet there may be a time when she ceases being able to continue to be our mother.  Pricked and bleeding from too many wounds of betrayal, she may like the Greek sorceress, Medea, let loose hellfire and torment and all manner of poisons among us.  Deranged by the very turpitude of her betrayers, her usual hospitality and good will—her healing nature itself–may be overturned by a rash of anger that places even her children in mortal danger.  Therefore, although we deeply, even unconsciously depend on the Earth to rebound and sustain us, we have come within view of the unconscionable scenario in which our very mother turns and destroys us.

The cool earth we walk upon barefoot today may be scalding tomorrow, or within a few decades from tomorrow.  The ground that is speeding through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour and whirling round at over a thousand suddenly does not seem so stable.  What is this “ground” upon which we walk, and how can we be assured that it will not all be under water 30 or 40 or a hundred years from now?  From one point of view stable, and from another point of view threatened if not groundless, we see that the soundness of steps we take varies depending upon the prospect of the viewer.  The “close in” view sees and smells and touches only Mother Earth and takes no account of any unfaithfulness or lack of stewardship.  The “far out” view sees a planet governed by an array of observable forces and conditions together with the effects of human activity upon those conditions.  Such a view is reached through the concentrated disciplines of biological, ecological, and environmental science.  These require effort and study to pursue.  The close in view, by contrast, is once again the view of the hungry and often mischievous child.  It is not by nature an overview but a kind of “underview,” that is, completely masked from any larger perspective underneath the billows of its own interests and current satisfactions.

As we saw in Essay #25, what the mind excludes from its interests and satisfactions often ends up in the shadow of its judgment.  Whatever enters that shadow becomes partly or fully hidden from the mind’s observation and, hence, partakes of an immunity to change.  That this is not an absolute but merely a relative or, more precisely, an illusory immunity to change we have already sought to establish in Essay #26.  However, even ignorance protected by an illusory immunity to change may have profound consequences, including the death of our species.  Put in another way, the three fires of the mind of craving, aversion, and ignorance together cast a shadow which can engulf so many of the processes of origination and becoming on our planet as to become lethal.  Realizing this, we might be tempted to conclude that such a shadow is really the source of evil faced collectively by humankind.  We might explain this further by pointing to mindless greed, hoarding, and the unfair control of resources by both individuals and social structures as the very causes of global economic and environmental collapse.  And we might add that efforts to achieve social justice and environmental change are the only hope to bring us out of the shadows.

Set against these conclusions, it is interesting to observe that the close in point of view we described above is the more grounded viewpoint.  The far out view that sees a planet in jeopardy of being destroyed by the shadow cast from craving, ignorance, and aversion is by far the more groundless viewpoint.  The observer who takes that view finds himself perched precariously in outer space in thought experiments, scientific investigations, and imaginary scenarios which by and large do not in any way guarantee the survival of the species or the planet.  Rather such an outlook presents as dubious the outcome that social justice movements will succeed in time.  It brings into view an environmental hourglass whose sands are already dangerously depleted and draining faster day by day.  If this promontory gives anybody the wherewithal to state definitively what is the source of evil for mankind, it remains strangely unable to address it or to provide any assurances about it at all.  As grounded as it would like to make its conclusion about ultimate evil, it remains groundless in its inability to do anything for sure about it.  This ought to be a clue to us that something is missing.  Or rather, perhaps we only neglected to continue to follow the trajectory of the far out view.  Perhaps we let it lift us into orbit only so that we could discover a way to reenter the atmosphere and walk upon so-called “solid” ground as quickly as possible again.  But what if the groundlessness of being in orbit was not taken as a kind of artifact or side-effect of the pursuit of truth but as truth itself?  What if the discovery of the mind’s shadow or judgment were not meant to elevate us into yet another position where we could “come down” with judgment but into a permanent orbit where everything were observed without judgment?

From this orbit, from up in the sky so to speak, we might find that things are not subject to the kind of falling apart that they are down below, relative to the viewpoint taken.  In a “worst case scenario,” true, there could be environmental disasters on a global level.  Human beings could become extinct.  Nevertheless, the planet would continue to exist and probably so would other life forms along with it.  In time, higher life forms might return, humans among them.  We have no way of knowing for sure.  What we can observe is that this orbital viewpoint at least makes possible the outcome that humans could die off and later return.  It therefore does not pronounce with doom equal to the calls of environmentalists and activists against the shadowy perpetrators of environmental damage and social injustice.  Instead, the view from the sky simply observes what the sky does.  With respect to all things, all persons, all thoughts, and all activities, the sky simply contains.  That is, it makes room.

The question, of course, is whether the sky by making room is doing enough.  By allowing and containing all is not the sky perpetuating evil?   Isn’t it up to us to do something about evil?  This of course is the almost irresistible temptation to descend.  To come down with judgment.  And here is just where we need to resist the temptation and instead further observe that there is something wholly benign and wonderful about the sky.  The sky is truly spacious.  It does not contract, come down, and smother one band of brothers or another.  It remains impassively in place no matter what.  That is, it remains above our heads, beyond individual, divisive, and judgmental thoughts.  At the same time, the sky invites us in.  It invites us to soar upward not individually but collectively in the sense that it promises through its very nature not to allow any part or parcel of creation to disappear unaccounted for.  Qualities may arise, transform, become other, diminish, and disappear but always in a process of dependent origination and not a willy-nilly manner of going in and out of existence at random.  Under certain conditions, the Earth may rebel, fight back, and destroy many of her inhabitants.  Even so, the sky would stand as a witness open to all possibilities and issuing no decrees.  Of course, the sky and the Earth are friends.  The sky by way of remaining open constantly expresses benignity and friendliness toward the Earth.  It does not come pressing or crashing down to influence earthly outcomes because it trusts the Earth.  It simply remains in place, containing, and by its very openness keeping all earthly things from flying off unsprung.   The sky in that way is invincible.   We can count on it for everything even if we don’t yet know what that means.  Its benevolence toward the Earth should be and is a clue.  For if the sky trusts the Earth, it must also trust us.

However, before we can fully engage this trust we must see more clearly what role our minds are playing.  The mind is not as spacious as the sky.  It is forever collecting into ponds and puddles what the sky welcomes as a whole.  What is one under the light of the sky would be unsprung by the mind into fits and fiddles, jigs and jags, and all the stuff that the mind polarizes into lesser light and darkness.  Fortunately, the sky is as friendly to the mind as it is to the Earth.  We, too, can come from sleep into wakefulness and join the Buddha as he gazes upon the Earth with eyes that ride beams from above.