Don’t worry, dear reader. I won’t bore you with yet another dull analysis of the crisis of meaning in our brave world of growing chaos. With such an analysis you and I would only add to the complacence of our instrumental mind, which wants so badly to manage things and, naturally, rule over them by the so-called “free will”. In the old days this was the domain only of the kings, but today we all want to do it, realising – of course – that this can’t go on much further.
Worse still: what we are touching and kneading in our zealous effort are no longer solitary clearings, but living beings. And every being is hurt when manipulated in any way. Today we all know that there are a countless number of beings, because the entire world is echoing with the tiny voices of innumerable bodies. And their pain is becoming unbearable.
So, what are we to do now, when we want to renounce our role of a strong saviour or of a manipulative judge? Let’s see: We’ve found ourselves on the spot from which we, perfectly sober, look upon all the joy and the pain of the world. Isn’t it true that the power of our sober insight lies in the fact that we don’t want to stand above the world? Aren’t we given an opportunity to help exactly because we don’t consider ourselves as saviours?
As free as a child waking into the first spring morning we’re opening our eyes and looking at the world in the suchness of the moment we smell in our spring breath. Oh, if only we had wings we could, like white swans, soar above the blue-green Earth and embrace the entire world. Along the carpet made of clouds we’d glide across the many human cultures in the west, north, east and south. We’d clearly see that in our globalisation era we mustn’t discard anything precious either from the East or from the West. A healthy global field can be established only through the participation of all different cultures. Polyphony of people’s yearnings… Our choices are wider because we’re so different. And how nice it would be if those who don’t yet know how to listen to it, because their own interests have deafened their natural ear for music, heard the song of the world.
The myth of modern individualism is creating an illusion of partial happiness, which ignores the whole. Greedy octopuses with concrete tentacles are squeezing the earth tighter and tighter, and a single culture wants to set the rules for all the others in an increasingly violent way. “The creators of our needs” also manipulate the myths of individualism, and the Earth is very tired. And above all – we aren’t happy, because by erasing everything that doesn’t suit our selfish interests we’re destroying our own reality of existence, the basis for happiness itself. For every being is woven out of the light of numerous stars.
What a mistake to believe that this civilisation, which today considers itself superior, has built its deceptive power on the subjugation of nature, on the fight of Man with Nature. Our spiritual home isn’t the sterile environment of concrete blocks, but above all the elementary wilderness with all its unimaginable and unpredictable differences. This environment alone can keep us in a healthy state of spirit; this environment alone provides for the sensibility and inner drive in which we harmoniously reverberate with Universe like whole human beings. Whoever has at least once listened carefully to this consonance knows that in it alone we are in harmony with ourselves, with our own nature. For cosmic reality, which created us, cannot be forced into any describable form. All of us who have seen the world and its unimaginable variety know this. We also know this in Slovenia, where we are happy and proud of having preserved at least part of the primordial environment.
When far up in the north a herd of moose graze in the endless vastness of polar nights lit by the northern lights, life is so precious that everything calls out to it. Talking rocks and animals awaiting spring are gathered in circles under the North Star. The mystery of the world is hidden in the sleeping stones and radiant dreams. You aren’t alone, no, you aren’t. Your unknown neighbour always has a warm shelter ready for a traveller shivering with cold.
And in the south people sit down among the warm rocks, in the cave of the night. In these natural homes radiating warmth they aren’t afraid of the night after the light of life goes out. Time becomes a compassionate friend, and this brings perfect peace: you become one with Time. And peaceful days are bathed in sunlight. Day and night you breathe in the bond with peaceful universe. And when you find peace, when thoughts and desires go silent, you time and again face the timeless clarity of awareness, which isn’t yours alone. All you can do is wonder.
What were all the great sages saying, from the Greek to the Indian ones? The blissfulness of life lies at the source of our awareness, not at the end of our aspirations. This is the return to meaning, which we are so desperately looking for in modern times.
The words which these people uttered and I wrote down here may be very simple, but in their innocent simplicity critically important. If we don’t understand them (yet), no brain effort will do; what we need is patience of the entire body and human self. But if we do understand them, they’re like water, which permeates every pore and crease in the earth, just because this water is incredibly soft and complying.
Pure, unalloyed happiness is the fundamental nature of our deepest self, claimed the wise men of all times, in all human cultures. And this makes things very simple. Material world cannot offer us much more than food, clothes and a warm shelter. Our activities in this world are needed only for the preservation of that fundamental harmony with the world, which enables us and all the beings that we love to remove the barriers preventing the experience of our true nature. Only if we assume a simple and innerly free life stance, when we are no longer slaves to fulfilling ever new material needs, is it possible to look at reality with curious, child-like purity, to experience a heartfelt connection with the world, to pulsate in the joy of existence. Only then do we relax and experience the heart and self of beloved beings – of ourselves and of all those close to us. Our activity is like a tree, which grows, blossoms and bears fruit. The fruit is our gift to the unknown birds, but happiness is more like the sap, which flows into the roots and veins from the mysterious depths.
If a tree started pursuing happiness through its fruit, it would never reach it. Isn’t something like this happening right now, in this cacophonous era, which is putting the dissonant results of human endeavour first and foremost? In the age of soft despotism and general manipulation, which virtually forces each and every one of us to join the global herd of insensitive rhinoceroses in the name of success and economic survival? In the age of chaos, in which every individual – according to his or her interests – is drawing the lines between the civilised and barbarian world?
In numerous world myths, religious traditions about the childhood of divine incarnations, numerous legends and fairy-tales there lives child with an innocent look who, in an absurd situation, steps forward and – with innocent honesty – cries out the words of salvation to the perplexed people, who are no longer aware of their own freedom: “The emperor is naked!”
It is so redeemingly simple when, finally, you are willing to step out of the thorny circle of outdated concepts and assume the burden of endless freedom.
So you and I won’t make a cage out of our own efforts. Let’s rather be as free as white swans! Soaring above green continents we gaze at the happiness and pain of the world. Below us are passing large cities with skyscrapers, offices, wonderful laboratories. And we stare: Scientists have just decoded the human genome and they believe that the genetic sequence conceals the essence of life. Some of them would like to patent the sequence to gain financial control over the bodies and health of all people; to others the sequence is just a magical formula determining human proteins, our behaviour and more or less everything. They claim that there will soon come the day when, through genetic manipulation in laboratories, we will produce better bodies and thus live healthier lives. Perhaps even achieve immortality? Yet others are more sober and admit that there seems to be no obvious connection between the set of chromosomes and the body. The first and the second groups are now angry at the third for reducing their opportunities for trading… Is it possible to speak of health if the only thing we see is our own interests, and we refuse to acknowledge the so-called “side effects”, which we hypocritically sweep under the carpet? Health cannot be based on illusion, let alone on manipulation. Where is our tree of knowledge looking for its source – in the roots or in the seeming results, the fruit, which should be offered to the birds? How could anyone learn anything about the secret of life in this way?
From high up we see all the countries, which in the game of history weren’t lucky enough to make a place for themselves among the few chosen rich ones. And now one superior culture is poisoning all the others. In the poor countries of the world people have lost faith in their own culture, and want to imitate the patterns of the rich West. They want to compete with its wealth. But the goal, of course, is unreachable, and just as unreachable are the western myths of happiness we see in commercials. Due to turbo-capitalist economic laws, Western illusions have started to seriously undermine all other cultures. When the rich West humiliated other cultures, and they lost faith in themselves and started following the West, the West created a problem for itself, which now it is unable to solve by itself. The problem of facing other cultures, of opening up to others. It doesn’t know how to open up; it remains arrogant in its illusion of superiority. And other cultures, naturally, are retaliating in a similar way. The world has opened up and not opened up at the same time, globalisation exists and doesn’t exist, for following a single role model is not globalisation. All this is creating horrible tension between the rich and the poor, the tension you’re most aware of when you stand on the soil of those desperately poor countries, where – after a long, stable period of modest living – people only recently, in a sort of hungry panic, fell under the Western influence.
Not only animal and plant species, but also human cultures and languages are now massively dying out. Of 6000 different languages allegedly existing on Earth, only a handful might survive if the cultural erosion continues at this breathtaking pace. This would mean a disastrous loss of cultural wealth, which has matured through the millennia and cannot be compensated by anything. Perhaps the masters of political and economic power objectively don’t care. Therefore the voice of those who are able to look into the future in a more responsible way must urgently be heard. We know that in the long run the tissue of the world is threatened by the now prevalent power doctrine measured by external financial efficiency. The money bug is like a disease, which has infected the entire world and is causing mass extinction of biological and cultural diversity.
Those whose mother tongue is English mostly feel no need to learn other languages. Unfortunately, many of them think down this line: English is now a global language, and we don’t need any other. The rest of us must and want to learn at least English in addition to our mother tongue. And so we have a greater respect for other cultures, while Anglophones probably don’t realise that their world is somewhat narrow because they haven’t invested any effort into stepping over the threshold of their home stable through language. They’re thus deprived of a valuable experience; globalisation will become healthier only when they begin to realise this fact. In our contemporary world every intellectual, including the Anglophones, should be able to speak at least one foreign language and thus show respect for the differences connecting our world. And consequently, the possibility of the strongest country to push for war so blindly would be greatly reduced.
But let’s fly on! Once more we’re soaring above the large human anthills, noisy amusement parks, glittering media centres, glamorous dream factories. Those places reverberate with the desire to have fun and indulge in transient instant pleasures. Just as we’ve grown used to the plundering of the earth and its treasures, we now plunder the blossom of time: We want to snatch as much as possible from the only moment we can touch with our senses, and we no longer care for the wholeness of time which nourishes the budding blossom of the present with the past and the future. Now there are noisy crowds below us, intoxicated by adrenalin, which has become the daily drug of our age. Most of them stare intently at the screens showing the heroes of virtual reality. By adeptly pressing buttons you can beat those eternally young heroes, proud conquerors from distant galaxies, and ritually identify yourself with them. However, this virtual reality doesn’t bestow on one even a smidgen of wisdom. Wisdom demands a contact with Earth, which is trying us constantly and inexorably.
We must not deceive ourselves with the attractive illusion that modern technology, which today’s world so blindly trusts, has delivered us from the trials we must go through. Mystification of science and technology can be dangerous, because it blinds us, and we’re no longer alert to the true problems of our time and push for too long in the wrong direction. In fact, the contemporary myths of the delivering power of modern technology have no real scientific foundation. They’re being produced by numerous opportunists in the scientific arena and, naturally, by the media. It so happened that the role, which used to be played by sorcery, has been taken over by science. But let’s be sober. Of course, we don’t need to reject the achievements of the previous centuries, but they alone don’t suffice. If we illuminate them with the insight of wisdom, it is soon revealed that we, human beings, have actual need of very few of the innumerable new possibilities at our disposal. The rest are only a seduction and a burden.
And the trials are here, right in front of the eyes of everyone willing to see. We’re still flying above our beloved Earth, peeking through the windows into the houses. While people in there are enclosed in the world of screens, big changes are taking place outside. The soil is exhausted, people are starving, waters are polluted, and the level of the oceans is rising. Water will soon reach up to the windows, and fish will start jumping onto the computers. Will the people glued to the screens finally wake up? Via those screens they’re still comfortably listening to the spiritually narrow-minded leaders droning on about the theories of conspiracy and threatening danger of the axis of evil, in order – by emphasising hatred – to conceal their own intrigues and selfish intolerance. Media manipulation rules all the pores of life.
The Earth is trembling in the rhythm of countless drums made of buffalo hide. And the buffalos warn us of the coming flood, for not only oceans and torrents, but also rivers of refugees are flooding the world. Where can they go, now that there’s no room any more? The buffalo land thunders under their restless feet. Our hypocrisy has uprooted them from their homes, and they have no more dreams to wake up into.
The Earth is thundering and lamenting, telling the stories of people and their merits. After all, our firm Earth is trying us mercilessly all the time, so that we can grow. So let us listen to its deep wailing. There’s absolutely no doubt that there’s still an enormous amount of suffering in the world. But we also know this: While a single sentient being is suffering on Earth, we must not deceive ourselves with the illusion that we’ve managed to create a brave new world. Oh, how seductive is our desire for this to be true, although only in the garden of solitary dreams!
Now that we – as white birds – have had a good look at the world, it is time we descended from the clouds onto the ground. We assume the role of two human beings, with human joys and worries. We carry our burdens along steep and winding paths. Sharp stones will hurt our bare feet, but if there are no thorns, there are no roses. And if we don’t walk barefoot, we won’t feel the blossoms, which would be a great pity. For it’s the contact with all those beings that makes our life so precious.
Tired, we lie on the ground. As we’re gazing at the clouds, they suddenly dissolve and the sky turns beautifully clear and blue. Like our thoughts, which will forever remain as free as birds in the air. Because we know that individual forms are transient, we know how to make room for all living forms. Our hearts still contain the entire world with myriads of sentient beings. The spring air still blows into our ears their countless tiny voices. And all those beings are interconnected like colourful threads woven into a wonderful carpet; if you pull one out, you destroy the entire pattern, the entire carpet. So the world is one huge family, in which we learn to cultivate loving kindness towards all beings, including those different from our expectations. Isn’t it the openness to the unknown that fills us with freshness and rejuvenates us?
Dreams and yearning are fundamental human rights. Not even this rational era can take them away from us. In this confused age of sophisticated technology and human selfishness we more and more often dream of a world of global culture, in which every human being will be capable of ethical reflection. The visionary Slovenian poet Srečko Kosovel called this kind of person an ethical man. Only then will we be able to healthily include the wonderful achievements of the human mind into the wholeness of our experience, which we call life.
Couldn’t we do it now, this instant? Informed individuals are free and capable of seeing far ahead, but in order to achieve an ethical transformation of the world we need to be connected in a completely new, inventive way. And one of our tasks is to write about this vision and thus pave the way for it.
The text was written for the international PEN conference at Bled, 2003.
Translated into English by Lili Potpara.