Day 15 - Hunter Gatherers
I find it interesting how many things happen at the same time. How many times a star is discovered in two parts of the world or technological advances that occur in the same way. It feels like this is basically the way it goes with humanity. We exist together even when apart, and ideas spread in a subterranean way and express themselves at the same time. We are not separate, are not foreign.
It reminds me of shifts such as when so much of humanity left the era of being nomadic hunter gatherers and settled in one place, domesticating animals and living a radical new life. I wonder about those first people who broke away from the accepted ways things were done. They must have been seen as having lost their minds. It seems that different people around the world began to do similar things at that time. Of course many did not, but much did; a discovery that shifted humanity forever.
It seems we need another great leap forward. Our moral compass has not seemed to develop at the same rate as our technological brilliance. We have made improvements; the level of brutality that even average people were willing to do to those of other groups or other tribes is generally less. However many lag behind, still wanting to live with what feels like a prehistoric relationship to hiding from what is, and becoming rigid in things being the way they want them to be.
The Lotus Sutra says that each of us is a Buddha in our own world, the center of a universe. The idea is that if one of us wakes, because we are truly connected, all will wake. That it does not matter when you do, that you will wake the rest of us as well. Even in the last moment of life, truly releasing the addiction to shame, guilt and judgement shifts it for all of us.
It may not be true, but it soothes my soul, and keeps me hanging in when I see behavior that seems so unkind. I know that I must balance the commitment of those that are closed with a determination to live in and from and with the radiance of light. I am ready to commit to a shift that I feel is more profound than leaving hunting and gathering. It is being the change we want to see.