The Way of the Panda

Those who have absorbed the wisdom of that enlightened being, Po, the Kung Fu Panda, transmitted as it is via the blessed vehicle of DVD, will remember two key moments.

The first one: his dad (OK, his dad's a goose and he's an overweight panda, but that's explicable in the follow-up movie) has told customers at his noodle stall that there is a Secret Ingredient to his delicious noodles. Eventually, he finally admits to Po that there is no secret igredient. (i.e. he just makes noodles his own way and they're very good.)

The second moment (spoiler alert) is when Po finally gets his hands on the Dragon Scroll, source of wisdom, power and general Awesomeness, unrolls it, and finds...the scroll is blank,  except for a surface sheen, reflecting his own face. The only real Awesomeness (as you will have guessed, it's an American film) we can find is within each of us.

We love the idea of exclusivity, a secret only we know, the source of in-crowd power. But to engage fully with reality, to be ourselves, now, this minute, we have to realise, and to internalise, the fact that there is no Secret Igredient, the Dragon Scroll is blank. There is just each of us, in the present moment. Living that truth is the only way to be enlightened, whatever that means to you in your own life.

Gurudom

It seems to me that the person with real understanding, true enlightenment with regard to states of being and ways of living, avoids the concept of "guru" as one would avoid a mad dog. The cult of personality is like a lethal and easily-caught virus, and you don't have to belong to some horrible cult to come across it in those seeking to dispense wisdom, especially wisdoms that can't be "dispensed."

Shunryu Suzuki was a Zen Buddhist teacher who settled in California and worked at a zen centre there. 

One morning a student at the centre arrived early and was horrified to find the Zen Master cleaning the toilet. He asked Suzuki to let him take over such a menial and unpleasant task. Suzuki merely said "Why don't you go and make the coffee?"

Gautama Buddha is believed to have told his followers "Be your own light." 

Any true teacher doesn't want the people s/he is working with to follow his example, or to use his ego to dominate them. S/he wants them to shine their own light into every corner, question everything, work for their own understanding.

Here's poor old Brian, in the Life Of same, telling his followers not to follow him, they are all different, they are all individuals:

 

But it's hard, especially when times are uncertain, to work through Big Stuff with your own devices. We like to be led. Brian's followers - well, you know the response:

"Yes! We are all individuals!" (In unison...) 

The difficulty lies in an internal conflict; to be widely-regarded as having unusual insights, powers or authority is to receive ego-inflating responses from those who feel they have benefitted from your particular kind of leadership. It is a pleasant thing, to be told you have helped others. It reinforces your sense of self-worth. 

But what many people want from such a leader-figure is a way of lessening the clamour of ego, and if the leader-figure shows just the kind of egocentric insensitivity s/he is supposed to be leading us all away from, the result is: disillusion.




 

The difference between a painted lady and a tortoiseshell: a new Way

I was recently lucky enough to be one of a walking group led, in a most unbossy and charming way, by a truly expert - I was going to write "botanist," which he certainly is, but the old term "naturalist" might be better, since his range of both knowledge and wisdom is huge, and it was put to excellent use for our benefit.

We walked around an area of coastal heath, then up to a high promontory, down to a disused lighthouse on a headland. We were lucky with the weather.

In case you're interested, I'll mention some of the creatures and plants we saw, such as this splendid chap below, but first I want to make my point before non-naturalists doze off.

If I want a sense of unity between me and the world, a sense of belonging and a feeling of balance, a usual route for me is via the natural world, and I think that's fairly common. But my typical approach to the natural world, and again, I'm hardly alone in this, is imaginative, aesthetic, meditative. Being in it, letting my mind stay in the present, looking at my surroundings as if for the very first time, feeling tuned in to the beauty of a place.

The Naturalist identified plants, birds, butterflies, land forms, soil types, underlying geology, and even the unbelievably ancient geological story behind it all. He did so in a typically gentle and encouraging way, which drew us out, and therefore in.

What the Naturalist saw and felt around him was based on  detailed and exact knowledge - science, if you like. People speak of reading the landscape. He seemed part of it, on intimate terms with it. He understood its inter-relations, its changes and time-scales. Of course he had aesthetic responses - he is particularly fond of toad-flax. His analytical understanding was always at the service of his powers of synthesis- I mean that he fitted things together so wonderfully well.

This is what he has dedicated his life to.

He was also able, of course, to be exact about the season. "It's late to see so many..." or "We are lucky to catch him, they've usually gone by now," or "they are mostly migrants, on passage to Africa, and they should be in south-west England by tomorrow morning."

I think when we put all this together, we've got a particular way of living in the present, in harmony with change, unafraid of the scale of the earth's timescales, able to accept how limited is our stay here.

As I left the walk, I felt the sort of calm elation I usually only feel after a meditation, or after an aesthetic and meditative experience of the countryside. The Naturalist's science-based gifts to me were visions I treasure.

(You don't seem many painted lady butterflies, and when one settled on a flower head next to two tortoiseshells, the Naturalist quickly pointed out the differences, in colouring, characteristic flight, in general what a bird-watcher would call its "jizz." So now I know, now I feel, more intimately, these two lovely creatures, and where they belong.)

 

The lady is on top.

Small copper, large blue, gate-keeper, meadow brown, grayling and peacock.
Eyebright, western gorse, bell-heather and ling, hairy vetch, toad-flax, sheep-bit, tormentil and creeping cinquefoil.
Grey seal, Manx shearwater, fulmar, cormorant and shag, buzzard and rock pipit, willow warbler and curlew.

Beautiful though they are, these are just names. Put it all together with the Naturalist's vision and you can approach something beyond names and concepts.

I think a life's dedication to studying and observing has given him a Way, a kind of enlightenment that is new to me. It's based on knowledge, but it's so much more than just knowledge.