Here I sit, looking out my front window with a cup of tea in my hand. I see a beautiful bluejay swoop out of a tree in that characteristic ‘W’ flight pattern and perch itself a few feet away. “What a beautiful bird,” I think … at least, I think this until it opens its mouth to release the most awful sound… a sound that is a blend of a primeval scream and an annoying shriek.

Think it is just coincidence that the word banshee and blue jay both start with the letter ‘B’? I think not.

Now, I realize that despite what some people may say, a bluejay’s features were not designed for my pleasure or entertainment… or even my “benefit and use”, but it is surprising that such a pretty bird can make such a hellish sound.

Strangely, this got me thinking about this whole struggle between the humans and the animals— a war that has been raging for thousands of years. I guess it isn’t that much of a leap if you have ever had one of these BIrds from Hell perch outside your bedroom window and shriek for a half-hour until all hope of sleeping in on a Saturday morning vanish.

One of the first to identify this cosmic battle was the Egyptians who classified the duel between order (civilized man) and chaos (nature). This perspective seems to have influenced other nearby cultures, including the Zoroastrians and the author of the first chapter of Genesis.

This is why the prevalent perspective of the “People of the Book” have the concept that God gave man the world as a gift to “subdue and have dominion” over the natural world.

Contrast this with some of the Eastern perspectives where humans are not above or below the natural world, but one with it. While there is not a single source that others refer to illustrate this point, one of my favorites is from Te-ch’ing, the 16th century Buddhist writer who made the following comment about the Tao Te Ching:

To know what truly endures is to know that Heaven and Earth share the same root, that the ten thousand things [the World] share one body, and that there is no difference between self and others.

Now, my point is not to brand one perspective good and the other evil, but this connected-ness seems to me to be more than just a metaphysical concept. Of course, we are all connected via the environment, since we breath the same air and drink the same water. But our guts are the same, as the creatures that I eat, ate other creatures that will eventually eat me, so that we pass the same molecules around.

The atoms in my body, while not permanent, were created in some distant star and have been used by many plants and animals for millions of years. But there is a bit more to this connected-ness.

I tend to look at an ant colony as a creature made up of individual cells called ants. The loss of a single ant is similar to the loss of cells when clipping my fingernails. Same with a bee hive or a bacteria infection… perhaps humanity is also a creature made up of cells, we called humans…

This brings up a quote from the Zen Buddhist teacher, Shunryu Suzuki (page 122 from Not Always So):

It is just your mind that says you are here and I am there, that’s all. Originally we are one with everything. If someone dies you may say he is no more, but is it possible for something to vanish completely? That is not possible, and it is not possible for something to appear all of a sudden from nothing… It can change its form, that’s all. So we are always one.

Not only do my dead cells get re-assimilated back into the world, but my thoughts and ideas live on after I die… to perhaps plague more readers of my web site. Later on the same page, Suzuki continues:

Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars that you see. Even if you jump out of the airplane, you don’t go anywhere else. You are still one with everything.

One with the sun? The light rays from the sun, not only gets impregnated into your eye when you look at it, the energy is infused into the plants that we eat.

This afternoon I ran into some poems by Natalie Goldberg (taken from the September 2003 issue of Shambhala Sun), and a common thread in her work is a concept of “mine”… that everything is “about her.” While it may have been my interpretation based on this thought-thread, but I didn’t read them as egotistical, but one of connection. And I thought I would stop this thought train with a snippet from the poem, “Mine” that says:

The mountain is mine
Moonlight and the far away call
of the train—all mine.