A couple of days ago, I was scooting through the latest, up to the minute happenings in the world, and I stopped on a story about dinosaurs in Australia. The article dealt with the discovery of footprints from some long ago giants. There was one from a big chap by the name of Sauropod. It was 6 ft. across and stepped down around 140 millions years ago.
The dinosaur story popped up again a day later and for some reason, my mind got stuck with the idea that these humongous creatures roamed the earth so long ago. I think we get numb to numbers that are too large, like millions of years. Nearly everyday, we hear about the deaths of hundreds and often thousands of people and don’t skip a beat. The larger numbers grow, the harder it is to impact us, because we don’t have reference points. Personally, I don’t think we try hard enough or care enough, myself included.
This morning, I am listening to Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare For The Common Man and doing my daily, paint by numbers, yoga practice and thinking about those dinosaurs and the reluctance of our minds to dance with time. This planet is seriously old and it has gone through an absurd number of changes in terms of its inhabitants, climate and its surface, its face. We are continuing to discover fossils, testifying to the presence of all sorts of life forms before us, who called this place home. When you look out over the horizon to the next million years, we will have left our fossil footprints on its face, just like Mr. Sauropod.
When I put on those glasses and see the world from that perspective, more humility inhabits my view. We are guests here, temporary caretakers, connected to all those who have lived here before and all those that will come after.
In Zen, there is Big Mind and Small Mind. The small variety is our everyday, myopic meanderings, often referred to as Monkey Mind. I always have an abundance of bananas to feed mine. This mind would think I am only talking about humans that look like us, when it thinks of history. The Big one is an indefinable sensibility and it comes from embracing limitless possibilities. It would think I am also talking about the Sauropods and life forms that don’t even have names because they aren’t here just yet. Until Trump forbids talk of evolution, I am going to go with it.
Over the ridiculously long time earth has been here, life has evolved and gotten more complicated and our Minds are the crowning achievement of this amazing process so far. I am one of those who believes that all life has spirit, which is the true nature of our connectedness to all, regardless of time. I guess the Big Mind business is about this and its vocabulary is impossible to express outside ourselves. All beings share this and everyone has a unique language, both incomprehensible and inaudible. It’s like dealing with something that is so large, you have to let go of it, loosening your grip and giving in, just giving in.
Our minds are The Seeker, a restless explorer. It is very disheartening to witness the effort by so many to diminish the value of science, which in its purest form is the quest for knowledge, looking for truth, always looking for the answer. It is a force that makes us a unique species, but it doesn’t put us at the top of Darwin’s evolutionary ladder, where we are so comfortable seeing ourselves. We are simply part of the continuing change, living a story that is millions of years old and one that will be inherited by our successors.