Sumangali.org: In The Spirit Of Serendipity

Yesterday our dear family pet, Rosie, went back to Dog Heaven.

She was small even for a Miniature Dachshund, and her recent illness made her slighter still, but I cried myself to sleep last night to think I would never see that little bundle of fur again, chuckling intermittently at memories of our 14-year friendship as they bubbled into mind.

It seems strange to call her a pet, as she declared herself a family member at every opportunity. She had the stature of a young piglet, but either she did not realise the fact, or did not think it relevant. To her I’m sure she was not even a dog, but just a being like anyone else, it’s just that beings happen to come in all sorts of (immaterial) shapes and sizes.

When invited to play, by any species, she offered a look of acute disdain. Even in her childhood, games were far too puerile for her. There seemed always a lot to do in that little head, as if she bore a great responsibility, or yearned to solve an equation but only lacked the hands with which to hold chalk to a board. Often she would stare piercingly into one’s eyes and start to yowl, increasing in scale and fervour, almost shaping her lips into words, then growing gruff and exasperated that we did not understand the thing she urgently needed to explain.

Her stoicism championed her good qualities. She bore all pain silently, and recovered from even the severest peril immediately. She came back from so many scrapes and illnesses, we often thought she would outlive us all. Her leaving us at last is thus quite astonishing; one final reminder to us that she will do just as she pleases, and not what we dare to expect of her.

Her most famous recovery was when another dog chased her off a 300-foot Devonshire cliff. Hours later the coast guard went down on a rope. There she was amongst the rocks by the incoming tide, unconscious, assumed dead. Back at the top he opened the little bag with its limp cargo, but she duly thrust out her head, yelling and clamouring as if she had been robbed. We conjectured that she was in fact some sort of barking cat. That would account for her size and her nonchalance, as well as the nine or more lives she seemed to have spent up to that point.

To be fair she was a little wary of larger dogs (perhaps more so after the Cliff Incident), but would not let them get away without a reminder of exactly with whom they were sharing the road. She would brace her head down and trot past, often ducking behind our lumbering Retriever, then when the larger dog had passed (and most were larger), she would let out a steady stream of expletives in its direction. The target would gape back, completely disarmed, seemingly stunned out of its senses that such bravado could be delivered from so close to the ground.

I first saw her over the garden gate. There she was in the middle of the lawn, the size of a guinea pig, but with the presence and command of a grown Doberman. She was all puffed out chest, stocky shoulders, ears akimbo (and curled out at the ends like a 60s bob), liquid black eyes, marching up to me with not an inch of submissiveness or eagerness to please, but only “Behold. I am Rosie.” For me that first glimpse summed up her whole adorably outrageous existence, and that’s how I’ll remember her.

I am forever, forever thankful for the laughs she brought and the affection she showed. One had to learn her language to know what counted for affection (a sharp nip on the nose with a blast of camel breath, for example), but once her respect was earned, affection always followed, as did her loyalty.

More on my love of dogs at SriChinmoyCentre.org:

• Inspirational Dogs
• Puppy Powers
• Savernake
• The Guide Dog and her Man

Old News: Gardening is In

Once again in the UK it has been suggested that we are behind the eco-friendly times, now caught red-faced and red-handed with basket-full of imported vegetables.

The production and transportation of food is responsible for 23% of our carbon footprint; above home energy, personal travel, and running shared services like hospitals and schools. [source]

China, Japan and Cuba are way ahead of us in their responsible actions, but being a tiny, densely populated island with horrible weather is no excuse, according to the more heroic amongst gardeners.

No, gardening, especially growing vegetables, is not just for your granddad, a left-over habit from the War. It’s possibly the coolest pastime of now. To be caught with compost under your fingernails and a faint whiff of Brussels sprouts, rather than an air-freighted fistful of Zimbabwean mangetout, may be your ticket to unimaginable kudos.

The Urban Farmer

Take Fritz Haeg for example. The architect and design academic, with exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London and Whitney Museum of American Art under his belt, chooses to spend his time on an inner-city council estate in south London with a trowel.

Last year Prime Minister Gordon Brown admitted “We need to make great changes in the way we organise food production in the next few years.” In his book Edible Estates, Haeg paves the way, urging you to dig up your front lawn for an “edible landscape”. Last year the Tate challenged him to make a permanent “edible estate” in the concrete metropolis known as Elephant and Castle.

The grass plot, previously used as a playground for drunks and dogs, was transformed into a paradise of fruit trees, tomato plants, aubergines, squashes, green vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. With a design based on ornate flower beds at Buckingham Palace, it not only looks beautiful, but no doubt smells a lot better than it used to.

Amazingly, although the plot is accessible to the public, no theft or vandalism has been witnessed. It’s not just venerable pensioners who are turning out to help; most of the volunteers are children and teens. Carole Wright, who manages the garden designed by Haeg, notes the project’s social benefits:

“People who have not spoken for five years are suddenly chatting again, discussing what they’ve grown. And it brings together people from different cultures too – they lean over the fence and reminisce about the vegetables they grew in their countries as children – okra, bananas, yams, sweet potatoes.”

[source]

The Guerrilla Gardener

The British government is not always so supportive of gardening. The intrepid Richard Reynolds (a resident of… Elephant & Castle) just grows ever stealthier in his undercover missions to bring blossoming beauty to public areas neglected by the council.

The council says it’s against the rules, the police say it’s committing criminal damage, and warrants arrest, but the Guerrilla Gardener is undeterred. Relying on donations of overgrown house-plants, seeds in the post, and whatever he can appropriate from his mum’s garden, Reynolds is on a crusade: not to feed the world so much as make it more beautiful.

And that’s a crime?

“I’d rather the council did things I can’t do, like fix the lifts. I’d rather do the gardening myself. I’m not an eco-warrior, I just like nice gardens and want to be left alone to garden peacefully. There’s no sadder sight than a paved-over front garden.

“Why spend so much effort cultivating your back garden when no one but you can see it? So many people live in big cities and don’t have land of their own, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to garden.

[source]

Pigs May Fly

For Toronto Scientist Gordon Graff, urban gardening is not just pie in the sky. His 58-floor SkyFarm concept is designed to provide food for 35,000 people per day.

The trouble with growing crops on the roof (well, the main one at least) is the weight of the soil used in traditional methods. The plan here is to use a “hydroponic” irrigation system, where nutrient-rich water is recycled through the building. One added bonus is that a lot of diseases thrive on soil, so without it chemical pesticides are no longer needed.

There are rumours that a similar building in Las Vegas would also house not only crops, but pigs. I’m sure much stranger things have happened in Vegas, so I’m ready to believe it. [source]

Further Reading

• The Guerrilla Gardening offical website: see how you can fight the filth in your area… if you dare.
• For all the latest gen on gardening check out Gardenerstips.co.uk
  (“What a great logo!” I hear you cry, “They surely must have got it from Pure Web Designs!” )

I was in the sea, snorkeling I think, or maybe diving. It was a long time ago. The sun heaved magnificent light into an already magnificent ocean, and all was bathed in lucid unearthly beauty below.

I was very fond of cowfish. They were like cartoons, little horns like raised eyebrows, boxy bodies puffing happily in and out as in a fit of laughter, big dark eyes, two arms fluttering—seemingly too small to do for anything but decoration. They always looked young, with childlike curiosity, as if so sure their own cuteness would keep them out of danger.

Their colours varied like all things in the sea, wearing different shades even when a cloud passed overhead. They were always brilliant, as if generating their own light, and always in such complex detail as if embroidered with a very fine needle and silk.

Someone caught one in one hand. The hand broke the surface and there she lay on the broad of the palm, in the raw blades of the sun, with no significant fins or tail to flip her back to safety. Her body looked instantly starved, the skin now dry in mottled greys stretched over a tiny twitching skeleton, eyes like dull flakes of flint, mouth and gills straining and sucking for a life she might never feel again.

I, like the cowfish, did not know the intentions of the human hand. For all we knew she’d breathed her last of the ocean, in the homely gardens of a coral maze. I held my breath with her, unable to speak or act in a daze of horror. The hand closed around her again

and let her go.

She puffed downwards as if squirted from the bulb of a pipette, her colours instantly proud and resplendent in the sun, now through its proper lens of sea. And she was gone.

I was told that it was all for me—so I may have a closer look at her when she was still. Still, I thought. But it was not her at all. Fish are colour and movement. I saw only the shrouds of death closing around her. Ridiculous. How can she be herself when she is in the air. I remained silent for a long time.

If it is true that fish have short memories then she would have been unchanged by the trauma, but I carry it with me everywhere. I glimpse her when I feel coerced by others—even when their intentions are innocent—to be something other than myself. True, I am in no mortal danger, but I am reminded that what is comfortable for others may be harmful for me. She reminds me to allow others their freedom too; to let them be as God made them, in their own proper environment. Only then may we each laugh and let our colours shine as He intended. I still have a way to go, but the shock of the cowfish makes me try.

“Accept God’s Will
Happily,
Rejoice in God’s Will
Proudly,
And move on with God’s Will
Speedily.”
—Sri Chinmoy
Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, 25101

By far my greatest fear when I was younger was one of deep water. I suppose as fears go that’s quite a rational one. It was perpetuated by Jaws—a movie surely unavoidable by anyone alive in the late 1970s. At the time, Jaws served as confirmation that fear of the sea was absolutely justified and almost constituted common sense. Those who ventured beyond the shallow end of a pool I crowned in my mind as heroes, and as veritable demigods those who would dive head first from a board. Those who would wade out far enough to lose their footing in the ocean however, I labeled as reckless dolts who did not properly value the life they had been given.

When harboured and reinforced for twenty years, even the most rational fear can reach irrational proportions and formidable strength. It seemed God had to carefully engineer an opportunity for its final dismantling, starting with a phone call from a friend—out of the blue so to speak. My friend had planned and paid for a scuba diving holiday in the Caribbean with a partner who had since gone off in a huff about something, so would I go instead? Many excuses came to mind, but you can imagine that none of them would be very convincing faced with such an offer. I accepted, viewing it gravely as a service, and nervously hoping more specific and robust excuses would present themselves when faced with the ocean itself.

It was with much trepidation and considerable self-transcendence that I completed my training and gained my diving license, graduating from the shallow end to the deep end of a pool somewhere in Alabama, then to the murkier regions of a former quarry. I would use up my air in half the time of my peers due to my anxiety, but by that time I had resolved to face The Deep once and for all, and I would not be deterred by any amount of cajoling.

I had to be pushed off the boat on my first adventure in the open sea. With all that outer paraphernalia and inner baggage, the physical and mental strength to do it myself had to be developed over time. I was enraptured though, from the very first moment. The harsh sun, the growl and fumes of the boat engine, the nauseous movement of the waves, the weight of the equipment, were all replaced by purity and gentleness on the other side of the ocean’s skin. Fear turned to awe as I entered a world where I did not belong, but which had ample room to house me. How humbling to be at the mercy of such a body of vastness, floating in a medium of which the human body is largely composed, but which alone would not sustain it for more than a few seconds. Up to then such tranquility was unknown to me, but seemed a perfect natural state. My breathing became slower even than it was on land, and I used less air then even than my peers.

There was no sound then except that breath: the husky drawing in, and the chink of exhalation, releasing plumes of amorphous bubbles. Colours were completely new; their hue and luminosity changed constantly, with a freedom alien to the flat shades known to land. Freedom of movement in all directions was also new and brought boundless fun, though my own mammalian efforts took me nowhere in comparison to the sleek agility of sea creatures. Stillness was a favourite practice, controlling the posture and breath to hover inches from the seabed. Movement without effort was the crowning joy, drifting with the tide over coral gardens, tiny fish hovering and darting, as would bees over blooms.

The creatures seemed to look on us as bumbling enigmas. They showed no irritation by our presence, neither fear, as they knew any lazy flinch of theirs would easily outsmart us. Some were notoriously intelligent, and many seemed positively hospitable, even taking time from apparently busy schedules to play games. The beauty, power, and harmony of that vast and strange environment have etched themselves on my mind and heart. I can still see a flock of eagle rays emerging into view, their massive wings forming slow, graceful arcs suspended in a saline cathedral. I can still catch the cheeky glance of grouper snatching chunks of raw fish from my pocket. I can still feel the specific majesty of depths beyond 100ft. I’d have imagined the form of a shark in those depths would have caused me to expire from sheer fright a few weeks before. In reality its beauty disarmed me, and I saw only the grace and efficiency of movement. The perfection of that creation brought tears to my eyes. In The Deep, to my surprise, I seemed to meet the Creator in myriad beguiling guises.

I have visited other oceans since, but I no longer hanker for sub-aquatic charms. Perhaps it is the growing sense that such peace and beauty are in-built, requiring only the key of meditation for their discovery. An ever-deepening Deep seems accessible without need of a license or expensive airfares, without the use of weights, wetsuits, and cumbersome canisters, and without the job of conquering fear.

Image: Prashphutita Greco at Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

While I’m on the subject of life-saving miracles, the BBC reported this week that it’s not just humans who take an interest in whale conservation. A bottlenose dolphin, known in her local neighbourhood as Moko, is taking it as seriously as any dolphin can.

Mr Smith and his team of humans were getting nowhere fast in their attempt to save a pair of beached whales from the north east coast of New Zealand. Moko sped to the rescue just in time (maybe in a waterproof cape), uttered a few carefully chosen instructions to the whales (maybe in a Whalish accent), and they made it safely home in time for tea (or maybe a krill tisane).

“I don’t speak whale and I don’t speak dolphin,” Mr Smith told the BBC, “but there was obviously something that went on because the two whales changed their attitude from being quite distressed to following the dolphin quite willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea.”

He added: “The dolphin did what we had failed to do. It was all over in a matter of minutes.” [original article]

Tales of dolphins saving humans go back to ancient Greece. It was Plutarch, the Greek moralist and biographer, who said, “To the dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage.” [source]

The best-known dolphin legends feature them forming a ring to protect surfers from sharks, or guiding stray swimmers back to shore. Incredibly dolphins extend their instinct for self-preservation to just about any species (except sharks), and seem to employ it with effortless brilliance.

Is it intelligence or just a natural benevolence? According to Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, they are much wiser than we are… but then he also insisted mice are secretly ruling the world. Even when I was hooked on the series at age 10, I wasn’t entirely convinced by that. Let’s see what the Ultimate Guide to Dolphins has to say instead:

Dolphins have large brains for their bodies — in fact, a bottlenose dolphin is second only to humans in the ratio of brain size to body size. Researchers have also pointed to the parallels in the organization of dolphin and primate brains as more evidence of high intelligence in dolphins. Some have gone so far as to suggest that dolphins actually have a language that humans simply cannot comprehend.

But others say that in our enthusiasm to anthropomorphize dolphins, we give them powers they just don’t possess. A closer look suggests that much of the dolphin’s large brain is taken up with echolocation and handling acoustical information — processes at which they excel. But dolphins tend to rank at about the level of elephants in “intelligence” tests and haven’t shown any unusual talent at problem solving.

So what is that unique quality that fascinates and charms us, if we cannot truly call it intelligence? In his book The Animal Kingdom, Sri Chinmoy calls it sagacity.

Dolphin : Sagacity
Dolphin, my dolphin,
Your advanced sagacity
Denies your inferiority
To forest animals.
You make man feel that your consciousness
Borders upon the extremity of human life
With ceaseless strife.

—Sri Chinmoy
From The Animal Kingdom

sagacity (su’gasitee)
1. [n] the trait of forming opinions by distinguishing and evaluating
2. [n] the ability to make good judgments

The names of the two saved whales are not known, and Moko’s instructions have not been translated, but whatever she said, it seemed to the whales a very good judgment indeed.

Beeches shook their auburn curls
like closely clustered giddy girls
chattering to pose and tease
whispering jokes into the breeze

Peaceably beneath I trod
an early dark and dewy sod
wondering that all was good
deeply in the wandering wood

A fungus there, a cobweb here
a brown birdsong above my ear
every sense at once obedient
yet drunk on every sweet ingredient

The dog a dizzy blur of mania
in a squirrel-scent arcadia
while above her quarry peers
twitching grey and tufted ears

Taunt her more, nut-loving friends!
On your guile a life depends!
A patch of silver in the roots!
In my heart a shudder shoots!

A tiny child in velveteen
by all others yet unseen
much too young to be abroad
a loss a mother can’t afford!

Beneath perhaps in rooty rooms
she paced and sighed imagined dooms
pressing to his empty nest
as if to hold him to her breast

Above he clawed and clutched and stretched
his little tracks in soil etched
the tiny traveler damp and grey
with what eyes knew he his way?

Somnambulant or still birth-blind
yet no pause to turn behind
he clung with purpose to his goal
and reached the safe and sandy hole

Did he trace his mother’s love?
Then let me do the same above
wandering asleep or blind
the stark morass we call the mind!

God forget me not on earth!
Breath of life that gave me birth
draw this little child of Yours
safely to Your Heart Indoors!

Continuing the theme of selfless insects…

My mother told me the other day (after watching BBC Springwatch) that if there were suddenly no bees, humans would survive only another 4-6 years.

Yes.

…

It certainly took me a while to recover from that small but gobsmacking addition to my knowledge. How come I never knew that?

What amazed me even more than the fact itself (I can’t find anything in print to support it, but as it came from Auntie Beeb via my Mum there’s a good chance it’s a fact), is that it must have been a fact from the dawn of our species… or any species… anywhere in the world.

This makes the news that bees are struggling to survive all the more alarming. I read an article recently in Celsias about Colony Collapse Disorder, and again in Science Daily.

I’m not about to dwell on the magnitude of these findings (or if I do, I’ll do it on my own time, not yours, and not in this serendipitous blog). Instead I’d rather dwell on that amazing fact: the humble bee continues to save our lives.

A prayer for their well-being (ergo yours and mine) would then perhaps be a more positive approach than alarm. In a small, incomplete, oblique way, this forms a response to Jennifer’s tag at Goodness Graciousness. She postulates: “To heal our world we need a new vision of what is possible.” So in at least partial response, I’m imagining healthy, happy bees (ergo healthy, happy everyone and everything).

Albert Einstein is reported to have said, “The single most important decision any of us will ever have to make is whether or not to believe that the universe is friendly.” Is that not lovely, and true?

Is the Universe friendly? A loaded question perhaps. How can it not be if we owe our survival to these fuzzy little chaps, saving the human race while busying themselves, — for their own good, due to some inherent incomprehensible selflessness, or just for friendliness?

Every day I watch them with fondness, during this, their busiest time of year, pollen trousers weighing them down yet more than their own fur and chubbiness. Now I watch them with nothing short of reverence. I have always loved them, at least ever since Winnie The Pooh, (who has always been, so that’s forever to me). Now I love them more.

More proof that bees (specifically bumblebees) are very special, is that their natural aerodynamics have stumped human engineers.

“The mystery of natural flight has endured for centuries and captured such great minds as Leonardo DaVinci, who designed several “ornithopters,” flying machines that copied birds. Early in the 20th century, engineers came to the conclusion that bumblebees “can’t” fly—at least they shouldn’t be able to, given their ratio of body weight to wingspan. The pronouncement sparked an enduring scientific “urban legend”; there’s even a self-help book out there called Bumblebees Can’t Fly, intended to inspire people to transcend their perceived limitations.”
— Beth Saulnier, from The Truth about Bumblebees and other insects

I really don’t want to know how they do it; the mystery is surely more inspiring than a formula could ever be. On that note, here’s food for thought from my meditation teacher:

“Each thought is a prayer.
Each prayer is a satisfaction.
Each satisfaction
Is God in preparation
For His own Self-transcendence.”
—Sri Chinmoy, from Transcendence-Perfection

Image: Science Daily

I am no stranger to the inspirations of nature. The loyalty of dogs, the industry of bees, the humility of grass; do they not far surpass our own?

Today I read an article in The Independent about the incredible selflessness of ants.

Researchers put planks of wood along the feeding route of a colony of army ants, with different sized holes drilled at intervals. The sizes of the ants varied from 2-10mm. Bristol University biologist Dr Scott Powell noticed:

“When the ants bump into a hole they cannot cross, they edge their way around it and then spread their legs and wobble back and forth to check their fit… If they are too big, then they carry on and another ant will come along and measure itself in the same way. This carries on until an appropriately sized ant plugs the hole.”

The ants acting as living plugs may stay in place for hours at a time while thousands of their teammates walk across their backs to fetch food.

If that’s not amazing then I don’t know what is.

Spiritual Ant Quotes:

“An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.”
—Lao Tzu

“Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant filled with the love of God.”
—Guru Nanak

“Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise; Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.”
—The Bible, Proverbs 6:6-8

“Ant, my ant,
In you my heart beholds
The glory of the Supreme.
Tiniest in size, you house the dream
Of the Omnipotent.
To me you are extremely important,
Because you represent
One extremity of God,
His message of smallness;
In another word, His greatness.”
—Sri Chinmoy

I found this image yesterday on Flickr.com. Not only is it an exquisite shot (one of many exquisite shots by Maureen F), but I find it symbolic. The entire sun is clasped by a tiny fragile petal.

It reminds me of one of my favourite pieces of poetry:

“And truly, I reiterate, . . nothing’s small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And,–glancing on my own thin, veined wrist,–
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes…”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
From Book Seven of Aurora Leigh

…which reminds me that God is everywhere, equally in the tiniest, most fragile detail, as in the mightiest force. Somehow that is greatly comforting, although it means He is really all alone… but somehow that’s comforting too… which reminds me of a song by my meditation teacher:

“In atom and in pollen and in human frames
my life abides.
All beauty am I, immutable am I.
I drink my ambrosia all alone.“
—Sri Chinmoy
Translation of Anute Renute

Today Maureen F has put a caption to her latest masterpiece:

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Food for thought…

There seems to be a bit of a conservation theme going on in this blog at the moment, and it’s about to be perpetuated. A new monthly podcast has been released this week. The subtitle is what caught my eye first: The Extraordinary in Everyday Life. Smacks of serendipity to me, let’s have a look.

Episode I is about Dr. Josef Margraf, a German biologist who went to China and didn’t come back. It all started with a rare species of banana in a Buddhist monastery, but now he cultivates over a hundred different types of plant, by replicating their natural rainforest environments. In his own words:

“Our goal is to reverse the trend of destruction and eventually design systems that look exactly like the old rainforest that has been cut down by logging companies, that have been replaced by rubber plantations and sugar cane plantations. We wish to reverse this trend to come back to a rainforest that is actually useful.”

Dr Margraf says his work has not only led him to discoveries in nature but also discoveries in himself. Furthermore, he has been amazed by the profound success of his project, which he calls Tian Zi, or Seeds of Heaven.

You can watch the clip above, or you can subscribe to the series for free on iTunes. (You can get iTunes here if you don’t have it yet, and Quicktime here.)

LIFE Voices is created by Kedar Misani for SriChinmoy.TV