Relearning to see with fresh eyes

On freedom as a practice of unlearning what we think we need to know

A flower by any other name

What’s this, what’s that, what do I hear, what bird is that, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. And in all the wondering I can find myself thinking, what’s the use in all this wrangling, where does the looping about for sense and meaning take me, does it make anything more of what already is, or does it in fact, take me away from it all?

This is a line of inquiry that has been coming up a lot lately in conversations with friends – which are really just exchanges of wonder and wandering, or parallel meanderings and thinking out loud.

“Do you know what this bird song is, do you know what that plant is, what breed of chicken is that, what’s the name of that flower?”

So many questions, behind which sit other more probing ones around our motivation, our compulsion, our insatiable desire for more knowledge – why, why do we need to know, what purpose does it serve, and what would happen if we let go of the urge for more and allowed what is to simply be?

Knowledge is power – and power causes pain

While a little information can facilitate understanding, too much knowledge can muddy the view, and in the worst case scenario, tip us into the realms of the harms that come from the urge to control, manipulate and possess what we assume we have a right to, by virtue of the power of knowledge, power being that double-edged sword that cuts both ways.

Daoism and the Dharma speak to this issue well, reminding us of what it means to live in harmony with what matters, rather than making a fuss- and a ruin – of everything.

Deng Ming-Dao aptly frames The Way (i.e., The Tao) as one of noninterference, necessarily pointing out the obvious in his book of Daily Meditations, 365 Tao:

“The earth is overrun by investigators and engineers. The wilderness is made vulgar with the noise of tourists. We don’t need their thermometers and saws. We don’t need bridges and monuments. In the context of Tao, this is to violate the earth with human ambition and to crawl over the landscape like flies over fresh fruit. Instead, we should simply walk through this mysterious world without being a burden to it.”

Education (in the capitalist, consumerist, colonialist, industrialist, and all those other insidious isms) largely teaches us that the more we know, the more valid our existence, the greater our accumulation, the more significant we we are. To know gives the illusion that we’re in control, which counters the insecurity and the fear and the frailty of not really knowing what we’re doing here or how it matters. And so we find ourselves reaching, grasping, seeking and projecting meaning.

Thus, the self-serving and self-perpetuating purpose served by knowledge pursued in this manner, is that it gives us the delusion of control, of certainty, of validation that we matter, by making our mark with what know. Only as Ming-Dao pointedly says, our mark can be vulgar and burdensome.

Curiouser and curiouser

In my work as a communications specialist, supporting people to relay the essence of their work, I spend a lot of time talking to scientists about what they do and what motivates them. They often tell me that at heart, they are driven by curiosity. Connected to that can be a humanitarian urge to do good with their work – to apply their insights to minimise the effects of sound pollution, to bring greater understanding between conflicting parties to the debate on colonial history, to improve the way we understand cultures different to our own, and so on.

Our conversations invariably end up being about the end result, because that’s what pays the way, the proof of worth that brings in the money that allows them to continue. My work, by virtue of profiling theirs, often helps to create a supporting case for that, by showing the difference their work makes, how it contributes to the greater good in terms of human/political/cultural/economic value.

While there’s merit in such transparency, accountability and responsibility (and let me add, I am a massive advocate for their work because it does make a difference, it’s enriching, hence I’m glad to play a part in supporting it) many of our conversations turn to the limitations of the burden to justify one’s worth beyond the inherent value of curiosity for curiosity’s own sake – wondering for the joy of it, for the illumination it brings to human experience, for the sheer delight of understanding, rather than it having to lead somewhere, to change something.

The freedom of caring without knowing

Back to the birds, the plants, the chickens and the flowers. I’m curious to know about them, mainly because I want to be able to care for them well. But beyond that, there’s no real need or purpose to know the specifics. I’m not someone who needs the information so as to serve an environmental, educational or humanitarian purpose of preservation or conservation.

When my partner and I hear the sounds of the birds, I find myself asking him, “who’s that (as in what bird is that)?” He responds with a guess, says he could look it up on his app, but then we realise, “why bother, why not just enjoy the sound, let it come and go, be a gladdened impartial witness rather than a collector of information”.

Because yes, it’s interesting to know, but then, so what?

Living in the country is a beautiful thing. The near-silence other than the sound of nature and the occasional hum of human conversation some way in the near distance, is a tonic for the mind and spirit.

And just as with the silence of meditation, the relative quiet amplifies the buzz of my mind’s internal chatter, the neuronal gossip that goes uncontrollably on, trying to label, identify, wonder and capture.

What I’ve come to realise (and keep remembering when I forget, thanks often to the sound of said birds and humans) after years of practice, and now a good while of that amidst open space, is that the interference comes from the layering of expectation (“I want silence”) and doubt/fixation (“why is my mind like this, where is all this coming from”), all of which adds to the noise.

The antidote is acceptance (“right now, it’s like this”), which allows for ease and the clarity of understanding things as they are rather than how I, we, would prefer them to be (“it is what it is and that’s more than enough”).

As ever, it all sounds so simple, and it is, in essence, once we break the habit of interfering with all our questions and projections.

I wonder if some of this is the gift and the curse of the writer’s mind, and how much of that impulse to remember and note facilitates versus limits the attention I pay to what’s in front of me, in favour of the “need” to know more about it, to question it, wonder about it.

That said, were it not for my curious nature, I wouldn’t have happened upon The Tao, the Dharma, poetry, and all other such portals to wonder and awe. So the lesson really is about balance – finding the middle ground, not too much of this or that.

This is the nature of spiritual practice as far as I understand, experience and keep at it. It’s also the conundrum and the challenge of discerning what to retain from all that we have learned, been conditioned to believe and think, and what to unlearn. Because that’s what so much of the practice is – getting free from the habits and patterns that bind us up in proverbial knots, leading to a state of confusion and disconnection from our inner knowing, which gets dusted over and compacted down by all the things we receive, ingest, consume and absorb.

In short, curiosity is a wonderful thing, and at the same time, we need to leave space for wondering aimlessly.

It's all a matter of perception, of learning to see with fresh eyes, of shifting our gaze, paying attention, choosing our view.

Liberation then could be described as freedom from the conditioned compulsion to know, in favour of abiding with what is. In a large sense, this freedom is the natural state, once we drop the projection of meaning and labelling and so see things for what they are.

That way lies more peace in the mind, when we train ourselves to stop making something out of everything and let it, let ourselves, just be.