20 - I was blind, but now I can see
The owl is an oddity, often taken to symbolize wisdom because of its ability to see what cannot be seen by other creatures. It sees all around itself with binocular vision, in daylight and in the dark.
In a figurative sense, as it might apply to humans, we can transpose the binocular vision to mean a high-level or a long-range view of things. As for nocturnal vision, it might represent the ability to see what is not ordinarily visible, or that to which we are usually blind.
These underdeveloped capacities are within our reach as humans. We do, for example, have the long-range vision sufficient to inform us that our mass consumerism and fossil fuel dependency will lay waste to our earth, just as we are able to see that we ultimately destroy our health with a junk food or drug abuse. Unlike owls (and all other animals), we also have the bizarre ability to act as if we were blind. This we call (in French), playing the ostrich (faire l’autruche). An owl always acts quickly in response to what it sees; humans delude themselves into not seeing, or feeling powerless to act. Some just don’t give a hoot. Presumably this is to experience the exhilaration of some day declaring: “once I was blind, but now I can see.” What a great year, and a great day, to start!
To see in the dark is more subtle. It starts with how we actually perceive darkness. We think of darkness as an external phenomenon that inhibits our vision, but the owl being perfectly able to see, would not call the same phenomenon darkness. So it is that what appears to us as an unfathomable mystery is but a veil cast by our limited consciousness, constrained as we are to our senses and to our information-processing brains.
The Sandokai contains this admonition:
In the light there is darkness, but don’t take it as darkness. In the dark there is light, but don’t see it as light.
In the light we see things as this or that, and say “this is how they are”. We have a wonderful meal with all sorts of named dishes, but then they blend together in the darkness of digestion. From this darkness something else will again emerge, into the light.
Every man is born of a womb and shall return to a tomb. The womb is warm, protective, and utterly dark; from it, brutal and stark is the journey into the light. The journey back to the tomb (the moment of death) is like a beckoning embrace of light (according to near-death accounts).
Light implies darkness as life implies death. Hand in hand, one is not somehow better than the other.
If we consider ourselves to be “in the light”, meaning the bearers of the truth, then we see those who oppose our truth as being ‘“in the dark”. This is a very old game, by far older than chess with its black and white opponents. Most don’t take it as a game, of course. They take it as an existential show-down, which is why we live in a world of existential show-downs and a grand finale lurking around the corner.
Now, do yourself and the world a favor. Suspend judgement of your opponents/enemies, outrageously, just as you would fight to defeat them, courageously.
Can such a shift in perception — a brief breach in your cognitive program — be achieved?
Here are three questions to try it out.
1. Would your actions be any different from those of your opponents if your genes and life experience had been the same as theirs?
2. How would you define yourself were it not for those who have opposed you? What about your country? In other words, who would you really be without them?
3. Can you conceive, even in theory, that you or anybody might ever succeed in converting or eradicating all existential opposition?
Do not linger on such questions too long, lest you cause a serious breach in your program. Lest you begin to see in the dark, to lay down your arms, and become an owlish hero. Just let the questions mull in the darkness of your non-thinking for a while.
You can see farther ahead like an owl, and also give a hoot by acting on your vision now.
Like an owl, you can see into the dark rather than chase it away with your blaring, well-intended lights.
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