NOWNESS and NATURE

Can animals and the natural sciences help us understand time? We know that, if we do not allow ourselves to be blinded by our seemingly innate human arrogance, we can learn from what we consider lower animals. If natural sciences can help us we can logically conclude that the lessons, the data that forced the hypotheses and conclusions, must have come from what we call 'nature'.

The first issue is 'nature'. We treat it as an other because the human animal's consciousness seems to almost demand duality - we versus they, black versus white, men versus women, and so forth. Even the famous yin-yang seems to support this duality, but have you ever seen the yin-yang symbol where the two parts are separated. They are always within one single circle.

Before I go further into our sense of duality as it relates to nature, I think we must look briefly at time. According to Shawn Radcliff's article On the Length of Nowness, “According to physicists time is an illusion, but for the rest of us 'now' is clearly present in our lives. . . . The implicit mechanism that determines the timing of this 'now' forms the basis for our conscious experience and contains two aspects—the sense that we live permanently in the present and that time flows like a river from the past towards the future.” (1)

May 11th., 2014 from Sprague Creek, Glacier National Park

We determine that time has passed by what I'm going to call markers. I took the first picture from our campsite on May 11th, 2014. This is the view that greets us every morning we work at Glacier National Park. The second was taken from a boat in the middle of Lake McDonald, looking at the same mountains, on June 26th., 2014. The third was taken about four days ago on January 27th., 2015. If you look at these pictures without reading either the captions or what I just wrote, you would tell me that time had passed. That is true EXCEPT . . . . each one of those pictures was taken “now”. No matter what we do we cannot be anywhere by “now” so instead of marking the first picture as 5/11/2014 I could have honestly labelled it “now”. The same is true for number two and number three. I am writing this “now” and you are reading it “now”. The only indicator of the passage of time are the markers. In this case the marker is the snow on the mountains and on the lowlands.

Lake McDonald, looking north, June 26th., 2014

Lake McDonald, looking north, January 27, 2015

In Buddhism life is a series of snippets - like frames of a movie. In meditation they go by as individual snippets where the objective is to recognize them and then let them go without attachment. Buddhism recognizes that we are no longer in the past. The past exists only in that we have memory of the snippet. The future hasn't happened yet. We are always here and now. Shakyamuni Buddha taught that we should remain in the present . . . in the now.

Let go back to 'nature'. It is even hard to write about nature without participating in the very duality that I wish to avoid. The proof is in science. Firstly a definition of 'nature'. Nature =df “1. the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities. 2. the natural world as it exists without human beings or civilization. 3. the elements of the natural world, as mountains, trees, animals, or rivers. 4. natural scenery. 5. the universe, with all its phenomena. 6. the sum total of the forces at work throughout the universe." (2) What are we? According to scientist, as reported in Wikipedia, “Modern humans (Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens) are the only extant members of the hominin clade, a branch of great apes characterized by erect posture and bipedal locomotion; manual dexterity and increased tool use; and a general trend toward larger, more complex brains and societies.”(3) In other words, we are animals. By definition, we, the animal known as homo sapien, are a part of nature. Nature is not an other that we go somewhere else to see. At the same time almost all of the definitions I read excluded the product of human efforts such as buildings, bombs, etc. Nevertheless we can not separate ourselves from nature because we are one with nature. 

Over the years I have read about, and myself theorized about how the human animal has given up, forsaken or lost fundamental animal abilities either because of our arrogant sense of superiority or because we gave up those abilities to machines and gadgets and computers. For example, I can demonstrate irrifutable evidence that the human animal is the ultimate running machine. We may not be able to outrun a bear in a sprint but we can run for hours and there are still tribes in Africa who hunt by literally running their prey to ground. (4) Many years ago I read about an experiment in which I would have liked to have been a test subject. It studied the sense of direction that the human animal seems to have lost or forsaken. They blindfolded the subjects on a moonless night, drove the around in circles to confuse them, took them out into a field and asked each of them to point north. The results were astounding. Some of us haven't lost that basic animal ability. I actually believe that I might be one.

So what do the other animals have to teach us? Take the bear, for example, in this picture of a bear with a fish. Do you think the bear has given any thought to whether or not he ate a fish yesterday? Do you think he is concerned about whether or not he will have a fish tomorrow? The answer to both questions is a resounding “no”. The bear is living totally in the 'now'. That doesn't mean that he does not prepare for the future. From the time he awakens from hibernation until June all he will think about is sex and food. From then on his focus will be on food for the coming hibernation. So we would have to say that the bear does prepare for the future. However, they prepare for the future while they are focused on the now. They never ever give up 'now'. That's a good thing because that future will be 'now'.

The other animals teach us to live with and adapt to the rest of nature around us. They teach us to stop struggling against the fact that we can only live in the now. They teach us to focus on the now even if we are planning and preparing for the future.

May I suggest that you spend some time visiting a state or national park, sit quietly and watch the other animals and the nature around you.  Allow yourself to be open to what you hear and see and feel.  Sit quietly and sense the total nowness which will open your senses to all time and your oneness with the universe. 

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(1) Shawn Radcliff; “On the Length of Nowness”; http://www.scienceandnonduality.com/on-the-length-of-nowness/; posted 1/30/2015.

(2) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nature

(3)  Goodman M, Tagle D, Fitch D, Bailey W, Czelusniak J, Koop B, Benson P, Slightom J (1990). "Primate evolution at the DNA level and a classification of hominoids". J Mol Evol30 (3): 260–266. doi:10.1007/BF02099995. PMID 2109087. and  "Hominidae Classification". Animal Diversity Web @ UMich. Retrieved 2006-09-25. as found in Wikipedia under heading “human”.

(4) If I were to give one single reference for the evidence of the human animal as the ultimate runner I would reference: McDougall, Christopher. (2009). Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. Knopf. ISBN 0-307-26630-3.