Member-only story
All Our Relatives
“When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly make up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing. In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Dao that we are all falling off a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it. So instead of living in a state of chronic tension, and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat.” Alan Watts
*
Silence is something that comes from your heart, not from outside. Silence doesn’t mean not talking and not doing things. It means that you are not disturbed inside. — Thich Nhat Hanh
The One Mind, the Universal Consciousness, gives birth to an infinite variety of life forms. Humans are one species, swimming in this energy-flux. We imagine ourselves separate from it, using it as we wish, but that’s a childish fantasy that implies the liberty to violate its sacredness. We don’t actually have that right.
Killing for sport is uniquely human. We Americans live on a continent that thrived thousands…
