Be the Hawk

This reminds me of last weekend when I was riding in Franklin.  I had to ride through some trails along high tension wires.  A red tail flew above me from behind and landed on the next furthest stanchion, up on the top.  The wires were buzzing loud.  I wondered how they know what they can and can’t sit on.  I decided to be the hawk, to try out the Zen I have been practicing.

When I got close enough, it flew off and headed for the next furthest stanchion away and watched me.  It was watching me the whole time.  Anyway, eventually we both lost interest and I headed down a nice downhill single track that runs from the YMCA in Franklin to Grove Street.   Normally, I have to say (and those that ride with me will agree) I’m a pretty timid rider.  Well, on this downhill I glided smooth and fast and felt like I was soaring or flying.  For a short time, I WAS the hawk.  That was cool.  The feeling was gone before I got to Grove Street but fun while it lasted.

On the opposite side of the coin today, I came home and got myself all riled up because my light for my bike wouldn’t work right.  There is something wrong with the battery pack.  I spent so much time trying to fix it and getting worked up, I ended up deciding to go to the gym only to blow that off too.  I was the battery pack when I came home.  I made myself a piece of technology…busted technology.  That didn’t make much sense.  When I was the hawk, I was free.  When I was stuck inside technology, I was a mess.  There is a moral there…

Peace...clear mind!

Rene Dubos...Dr. Dubos...author of "A God Within"

This is a very smart gentleman.  This was written 40 years ago.  Dr. Dubos had great insight into where we were (are) heading as a race.  This book is still quite relevant today.  He was professor emeritus at The Rockefeller University in New York City, a microbiologist and experimental pathologist.  He wrote many important books including “So Human an Animal” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.

It starts off with Theology of The Earth.  God of Earth and The Universe.  God who is within us all.  God.

Then…it takes off on a scientific journey on how we as a race are losing sight of what is important.  Understand, this book was written in 1972.  God within us gets lost in most of the book’s scientific and environmental tangents.  Rene’s intentions are good.  He discusses environmental issues that are going to have a serious effect on the near and distant future (and they have 40 years later of course).

Here’s some tidbits…remember he wrote this 40 years ago.

-          "All ancient civilizations have expressed wonderment at the beauty of the Earth.  Technological civilization has created a progressive loss in concern for the beauty of the Earth.  It has been degraded and devalued as has human life."

-          "There is a demon in technology and it was put there by man.  Man will have to exorcise it before man can once again achieve the 18^th century ideal of humane civilized life."

-          "If present trends were to continue for a few more decades  (it has been 4 decades since this was written), mankind will indeed be doomed – not to extinction but to a biologically and emotionally impoverished life."

From T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Remember this is 1972.  Rene writes: “The means of communication between and within groups are becoming more numerous, varied and efficient (what would he think of all the ways to communicate we have today?)  Yet, paradoxically, the outcomes of this interdependence and ready communication are the lonely crowd and also a pathological cult of personality.”  This could have been written in present time and still would make sense.

“There is something fundamentally irrational in a society which makes the ways of life of its members conform to the efficiency of technological operations, rather than to their individual needs and aspirations.  Efficiency may be an essential criterion of modern technology, but man is not a machine.  Diversity, not efficiency, is the sine qua non of a rich and creative human life.”  This man was way ahead of his time…

Thoreau had faith in man’s potential but little respect for man’s inability to do much with it.  He believed his contemporaries were failures because the true way had been lost a long time ago.  Thoreau hoped that his return to nature, his traveling the road not taken, would help him find a better future and hoped that others would follow.

Peace and clear mind...