A Heartfelt Knowing

   There's a very beautiful quote from ecological writer Aldo Leopold which I came across in an article called "The Blue Sapphire of the Mind" by Douglas Burton-Christie. At one point, Leopold was travelling in Arizona, and he and his friends had come upon a wolf accompanying her pups. He decided to kill the mother wolf as a kind of sport, perhaps as a way of proving his valor to his friends...or perhaps out of a recklessness. But when he sees the wolf dying, he suddenly changes his view of nature and the world in general. He writes:

     We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and  have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes--something known only to her and to the mountain....I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view. (cited in Burton-Christie, p.43)

Leopold's reaction and his change in the way he sees the wolf are quite remarkable to me. For one, they indicate a shift away from a utilitarian view of nature. Rather than seeing the wolves as simply 'factors' in controlling the deer population, Leopold is able in that moment to observe the wolf participating in a greater mystery. When Leopold is able to suspend his views about what a wolf "is" and what "it is for", he yields to something deeper and more mysterious: a commonality shared between the wolf and the mountain. The other poignant aspect of Leopold's experience is that he learns humility: there are simply some things that he does not know, and perhaps can never know, that are shared between other sentient beings. I suggest that when Leopold moved away from a view that all knowledge must be his, he was able to give rise to compassion.

Reading this passage,  I can sometimes comprehend why the assumption of 'knowing' what things are 'used for' can obscure compassion. I think it is because, under that assumption of 'knowing' what a person sees in that moment isn't really the living totality. It is only a kind of dry figment of life which has been preserved in a jar, or like one of those butterflies that has been stuck between onion-skin papers and left to dry. It is only a semblance of life that comes to mind, not the total and awe-inspiring whole. It is kind of like confusing the thought for an existential knowing, or a knowing that comes from being itself.

Leopold's experience is a kind of symbol of what compassion might look like. It might be that moment when a person stops trying to know everything by classifying, and sees with the total heart exposed in the moment. This heart wisdom is not about grasping, but it's about 'hanging out there' in that moment and not being afraid to be wrong, to be humbled, or to even be nothing or 'not quite something.'

Burton-Christie, Douglas (2011) "The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Christian Contemplative Practice and the Healing of the Whole". from Contemplation Nation: How Ancient Practices Are Changing the Way We Live. Ed. Mirabai Bush. Kalamazoo: Fetzer Institute