ah, this I know

My hiking friend muses on flower language...

The weather will remain fine, but the green passes so quickly. Maybe its just its ephemeral nature that makes me want to drink it in every chance I get. The wildflowers where I hike are just starting. This year I might get an identification book; I like to know what things are called. What is it about being able to name things? Maybe its enjoying the gift of language, maybe its about being able to say - ah, this I know.

There is an inside to our experience. Our eyes receive the colors and shapes and movements. Our noses receive the scented messages of wild spring. Our feet take us closer, our hands reach out to the textures. Our skin feels the breeze and the warm sunlight. Our hearts and minds respond. There is an interior to our experience. The light on the retina causes the cells to react and pass on what becomes perceptions in our minds, our heart imbues the perceptions with a wordless meaning, which can take on any story that comes to mind or none at all. We feel we are there, we know it.

Separate from and equal to the individual experience, you and I share an experience of wildflowers on rolling hills in the spring sun. "That is California Poppy, Eschscholtzia californica". To know it through language we are connected each to the other. On the inside is the common visual systems producing perceptions, the mutual language and the history systems that we share; on the interior of this shared experience, with language and beyond, is to know it in you and to know it in me through the resonances and dissonances of our poppies experience. Through our languaging I am there with you and all the others.

In calm and calamity, holding the paradox of I and We situates us in the experience of meaning. That is the field of compassion. To others as to myself.

"I've said it many times, but I do believe it is true: Spirit surely manifests itself in everything that arises, but it especially manifests itself in this miracle called a 'we'. If you want to know Spirit directly, one of the ways to do so is to simply and deeply feel what you are feeling right now whenever you use the word 'we'.

There are many ways to talk about these important differences between individual and social, but perhaps the most significant ... is indeed the fact that the we is not a super-I. When you and I come together, and we begin talking, resonating, sharing, and understanding each other, a 'we' forms--but that we is not another I. There is not an I that is 100% controlling you and me, so that when it pulls the strings, you and I both do exactly what it says*.

And yet this 'we' does exist, and you and I do come together, and we do understand each other, and we can't help but understand each other, at least on occasion.

Interesting, isn't it? The richness and complexity of this 'we' is simply staggering... and yet it exists. And we can understand each other--you and I can understand each other! But how on earth do you get in my mind, and I get in your mind, enough that we are in each other to the point that we both agree that we can each see what the others sees? However this happens, it is a miracle, an absolute, stunning, staggering miracle...."

Philosopher Ken Wilber, from his book "Integral Spirituality".

*Wilber's dog, Isaac, dominates all the cells of his body. When Isaac gets up and walks away half his cells don't go one way and half go another. That's an individual (a dominant monad). When a swarm of bees or a flock of geese move in a coordinated way it is by mutual consent of individuals acting through their social aspect. That's a we (a dominant mode of discourse, a predominant mode of mutual resonance). Without both aspects of each occasion I am and we are incomplete. 'I' and 'We' are two of the irreducible quadrants of any occasion.

The Tathagata's Flower Sermon was wordless, encapsulating ineffable tathātā: it comprised the purity of direct communication wherein Śākyamuni proffered a white flower to the sangha (a flower by which he had been gifted immediately prior to ascendence of the teaching dais), amongst whom there was no realization except Mahākāśyapa, who smiled. According to tradition, the smile signified Mahākāśyapa's direct cognition, and Śākyamuni affirmed this by saying:

I possess the true Dharma eye, the marvelous mind of Nirvana, the true form of the formless, the subtle Dharma Gate that does not rest on words or letters but is a special transmission outside of the scriptures. This I entrust to Mahākāśyapa.