Animism. Pantheism. Deep Ecology. All three have much in common, in terms of outlook upon life. All is alive, all has worth. They move the focus from 'me' to the world; they see 'me' as one tiny piece of a living marvellous place. Let's follow them for a minute or two. Let's throw Descartes into a soul-filled ocean, and see where it leads us.....
No longer is the world dead, but it scintillates with vitality. It is a place of infinite magic. Wherever you look; you just can't escape it. Two distinct truths paradoxically co-exist, indeed interdepend. Firstly, there is interconnection - of everything with everything else. It is the great kaleidoscope. And secondly, there is the individual unit. Interconnected, yet discrete, recognizeable as a separate entity.
Take this co-existence to the nth level, and you find true gnosis. In Hindu terms, there is the simultaneous manifestation of samadhi and kaivalya, of union and individuation. Swing into Buddhism, and it is the non-difference, the cosmic dance, of Maya and Tathagatagarbha. The final embrace of Samsara and Nirvana, maybe. Non-differentiation of Self and Other. Heady stuff indeed.
Part Two
It's a while since windfarms appeared on Pale Green Vortex. They haven't gone away, though. In England, I believe their construction onshore has stopped. Here in Scotland, however, with its more enlightened regime, their building continues. The pace has slowed down, due to less giveaway subsidies nowadays, but still they turn up. Sometimes projects that have been in the pipeline for years, going through wrangles, objections, overturning of objections by the enlightened lackeys of Holyrood. And so on.
The latest one hereabouts to be finally built, after refusals by Highland Council, only to be steamrollered by central government (great upholders of local democracy), is Tom na Clach, on Dava Moor. It is located between Inverness and Aviemore, roughly, on windswept upland hills. In the middle of nowhere, you will be told. 'In the middle of nowhere' is an anthropocentric, rather than animistic, concept. It means that there are no pubs, supermarkets, or housing estates to be found there.
Go to the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, a far-flung place ('far-flung': another anthropocentric expression. Flung far from where? Oh, the nearest motorway). There, on that island jewel, you will find poets, painters, photographers. All of them delight in the play of sunlight upon a little pool of water nestled among the heather; the dance of the long grass in the wind; the drunken movements of an insect as it bumbles across the peat. These are our priests and priestesses of the natural world, embracing the sacred in even the smallest thing. It is they who lay their talents down in the service of the gods, the goddesses, the Source, speak as you will.
On Dava Moor, the contrary is encountered. Wanton destruction, as blankets of peat are trashed, birds flee or face an inelegant end at the hands of the turbine choppers, the wind butchers' blades.
All of this is totally unnecessary, even from the viewpoint of human survival and well-being. From our animistic perspective, we could regard it as a crime. It is wanton, heartless, needless. We know about 'war criminals', those deemed to have acted outside the bounds of 'acceptable behaviour'(!) during the course of armed conflict. To the animistic mind, there are, alongside war criminals, 'moor criminals', those who have brutalised the Earth beyond the limits of 'necessity'.
Today, in my present mood, I write this quite literally. I would like to see these perpetrators of crime against nature, the moor criminals, tried and punished accordingly. I am thinking primarily of those in central government who have shaped policy whereby such creations as Tom na Clach windfarm are encouraged; and those appointees of central government who grant consent, flying in the face of local government even, and thereby also demonstrating utter contempt for local feeling.
There are those who live close to 'God'; and there are those who have fallen far......
Part Three
When windfarms, especially 'upland' windfarms, turn up on the agenda, a variety of emotional responses are triggered in me. Sadness often appears, particularly in the light of a newly-constructed windfarm. Feelings associated with how things once were, a hill or moorland as it used to be. When 'work is in progress', as in Tom na Clach, or when trouble is brewing, I invariably experience anger, wrath, rage.
This rage is a different feeling to that which appears when the computer malfunctions in the middle of a 'very important project'; or the feeling which breaks through on the bus failing to turn up when I'm at the bus stop laden with shopping. Or when the peanut butter drips off my knife onto the tablecloth before reaching my breakfast slice of bread. No. The windfarm nature rage seems less personal. OK, there is the 'poor little Ian losing his nice quiet landscape' element; but it is predominantly of a different order. The screaming wrath is not really 'mine', at least not in the way that we usually experience 'me'. It is more like something being funnelled through me. As experienced, it comes from outside of me. It is connected with nature. I fancy it to be feminine.
This kind of rage, alongside its counterpart lust, I cherish as most valuable. It comes as a warning sign, or a sign that something's up, or that I'm bolting the door on something which I need to be courageous to let in or let through. I do not seek to eliminate all anger and lust. In this way, I'm a crap Buddhist. Similarly, I do not align myself with those New Agey lightworkers who disown their primal lusts and rages. And the same goes for those smiley-smiley self-professed enlightened beings, normally non-dualists, who can be found in abundance on the internet. Some of them claim to have eradicated lust and anger completely, in true Theravada Buddhist fashion. Others may experience anger, but do not identify with it: it is not 'mine', not 'me'. I do not consider this attitude very satisfactory. Rather, the rage and its object will be embraced, examined in its fullness and uniqueness, investigated, to find its deeper nature, and appropriate action taken as required.
My rage is like a precious jewel; or it can be. It is a gateway to the infinite. In this way, should I choose to align myself with anything from the Buddhist traditions, it will be more with traditions of Tantra. Not all rage and lust emanate from the neuroses of a deluded sense of separate ego-ness. I feel increasingly for the figures of the Dharmapalas, rageful characters who protect truth, reality. They know the sacred nature of energy; they do not seek to eradicate. They see the Buddha nature tucked away in all manner of feeling. In them is to be found the heroic.
Images: -Hummingbird - Oscar Magallanes
-Tom na Clach (photo: Press and Journal)
-Wrathful Tara (thefemalebuddha.wordpress)
-The Dharmapala Rahula
