Considering humanity through history, it’s a big thing. What we call History- it’s characters and narratives- is a thin, subjective braid of what events and people have influenced the course of our development.
Think of the parent that prodded a child in such a way to eventually lead a tribe through famine. That parent is all but dust, but the surviving culture resonates through generations. This principle is not new, of course. The Butterfly Effect, or whatever names it’s been given. What interests me in this post is the way the individuals who acted in such a way as to influence the greater course of things are lost, like the hypothetical first bipedal primate. Although they were a self, with an Ego and audacity to erect their spine sufficiently to peer over the savanna shrubbery, that Ego is dissolved forever into the connected web of time.
This is the way all other life works. There are no tales of a valorous she-wolf, who hunted with a lame leg through a frigid winter to feed the pups of the entire pack… Only generations of pups remain. Or of the many Monarch butterflies who flutter and buffet the span of a continent each fall to ensure the next generation will sip the nectar of Spring. It’s unlikely that these creatures are selfless. They make decisions throughout their days, navigating their immediate environment. Just like us, sometimes the decisions are instinctive, other times require a form of if-then logic. These ripples, the dissipative effects of routine decisions recombine in emergent and divergent patterns of constructive and destructive interference: The worlds we each live in. The dolmens, with their terminal copestones, that our ancestors erected to honor the dead fail to capture this ongoing reverberation of our ancestor’s influence.
“A monk who does not think of death, and does not have it before his/her eyes, and does not see it as it is, and see his/her own life objectively in the light of death, cannot be a true Monastic.”
Thomas Merton
What of now? I’ve often pondered that the connectedness to nature that I strive for through this monasticism is, in a way, a death. Severing (at least trying to do so) myself from the day-to-day means parting with exchanges and stimuli that bring life tantalizing immediacy. The end-state of my monasticism, were it to be 100% successful, would be the death of Ego in myself, and perhaps successful meditations occasionally provide a glimpse of this. Monasticism elsewhere in the West may be interpreted as a type of death in its denial of the body and participation in the colorful, varied life of the lay folk.
My hermit life here is busy. I’m working hard to help wildlife, to get people growing native species through the messaging in my business, but in any lasting effects, there will be no me. There will be no recollection of the day I collapsed in tears when a cat raided my flight aviary, or the countless days spent feeding baby birds who hopefully will grow to fear me and all mankind. I won’t say what I do is thankless. The rewards of seeing healthy independent birds fly off are deep and wide. Similarly, seeing these native seeds going through hands into the soil is a powerful inspiration. But I am faceless in the radiation of these impacts.
Perhaps being monastic is truly an early death: one’s faceless emanations begin earlier. Like passing wealth on to your children while you are still alive, you can see some of the things they do with it. Perhaps this is the reward for withdrawing facelessly into my hermitage, and attempting to dissolve the Self. I can witness what the future may do with my efforts today, and I can shape those ripples more effectively, and breath easier while understanding the efficacy of my labors.