Report 32

Clarification regarding gophers: Now that I think about it, they might have been ground squirrels.  Most ground squirrels will not try to attack a snake, but in a certain area of California, there are ground squirrels who attack rattlesnakes to defend themselves.  Experimenters raised ground squirrels for two generations in an area without rattlesnakes, and then reintroduced snakes.  What they found is that these ground squirrels were even more aggressive toward rattlesnakes than those who had grown up in their natural context.  

I sometimes think I'm like one of these ground squirrels when considering my own reactive tendencies.  Technically speaking, shyness (for example) is not unnatural, but sometimes a reaction can be completely out of balance with what the situation calls for.

Paraphrasing Stim's homework assignment:   What can you find in yourself that is self-defeating?  Things that look perverse, like troublemakers -- what more can you learn about these?

This morning while sitting, it became apparent that our obstacles are also our perfect teachers -- not just because we can learn from our mistakes, or as a way to learn to appreciate things better, but because they can teach us about the enlightened nature of all things, they are directly that nature, which is the reality of all things.  This was a little different from taking the wall as the perfect teacher, an object (or relationship to an object) which has a neutral character.   It was a fleeting impression, probably because I jumped into "trying to remember" too quickly, hoping to describe and preserve it to myself so that I'd have something to say for the homework assignment (!).

This evening, Mits and I went to see the Coen brothers' latest movie, A Serious Man, and after leaving the theatre, I suddenly realized that I kind of like New York after all.  We've been living here for 6 years now, and during most of the time here, I've been thinking of the city as a modern day labor camp for office workers -- living on top of a garbage heap with horrible desk chairs that ruin your body, a horribly unjust economy, an infrastructure designed to pummel life and nature as it tries to take root.  There are probably good things about New York, I know I'm not taking a good attitude about being here.   But after watching the movie, it started to seem like if I could learn to appreciate NY, I'd be more able to appreciate any place I lived.  

(BTW, A Serious Man might be a good class trip!  If anyone else has seen it, maybe we could talk about it!  The movie starts with a quote: “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.”)

***To be continued***