Chapter 1.2
We happy cicadas
This story is the second in a three-part sequence. The previous story is: Awaking to awareness
The Equal Tales is a record of wonders. In the words of the Tales:
When Of a Flock migrates to the southern darkness
he thrashes across the water for three thousand miles,
catches a spiralling air-current to ninety thousand miles,
and departs on a six-month breeze.
Cicada and Learned Pigeon laugh at this, saying:
We spring up and take to flight, beating straight for an elm or sandalwood.
Sometimes we don’t make it and we drop to the ground. No drama.
What’s all this about going up ninety thousand miles and heading south!
These two insects, what do they know?
Small knowing doesn’t reach large knowing.
Small years don’t reach large years.
How do we know this?
Morning Mushroom doesn’t know dark moon and crescent moon.
Summer Cicada doesn’t know spring and autumn.
* * * * *
In the words of the Tales.
Whereas Chuang Tzu’s opening description of Of a Flock all but compels us to look beyond the world of things (his wings span who knows how many thousands of miles), in the words of the Tales Of a Flock is a mere thing in the world. (If the wake he thrashes is three thousand miles long, his wingspan must be considerably less. He’s now a dot compared to the ninety thousand miles he ascends to.)
From being a metaphor for horizon-spanning consciousness, Of a Flock has been reduced to being a literal bird.
Religious and spiritual people reduce consciousness to a thing when they identify it with a soul: a discrete thing that moves about from here to there. Scientifically-minded people reduce consciousness to a thing when they identify it with brain cells: discrete things trapped inside our skulls. Both views fail to see what consciousness actually is: the subjectively-experienced here-and-now field in which things exist.
Chuang Tzu uses the image of Of a Flock to point to awareness, but we cicadas and learned pigeons mistake the pointing finger (the image of Of a Flock) for the thing being pointed to (awareness). Instead of seeing awareness we just see a big bird.
Cicada and learned pigeon laugh at this story.
No wonder they laugh. They’re focused on living a good life, beating for this and that elm and sandalwood (making efforts to get food, shelter, sex, friends, qualifications). The practical irrelevance of that big bird is like the practical irrelevance of grand things like immortal souls and high-tech brain scans. Who among us really takes these things seriously? In our pursuit of so-called mundane things (food, shelter, sex, friends, qualifications), don’t we all laugh, or shrug, at those grand things?
If we see Of a Flock as being just a big bird, we are wise to laugh at this story. We are wise to dismiss Of a Flock as an abstract irrelevance, or as an absurd tale told by a confused bard who has ingested a few too many magic mushrooms.
These two insects, what do they know?
We cicadas and learned pigeons know things. Tables. Chairs. Sex. Brain scans. Souls. Afterlives. Galaxies. Stories about big birds.
This is small knowing. Knowing this and that thing.
Small knowing doesn’t reach large knowing.
Whereas small knowing is knowing this and that thing, large knowing is being aware of awareness.
~
Awareness isn’t a thing.
Awareness is the here-and-now that in which things exist.
I point to a mirror and say, There’s the glass. But my friend, following the direction of my finger, says, I can see a table and a fruit bowl. I say, No, those things are in the glass. To help my friend see the glass I reposition the mirror so that it now reflects a different set of things, and I say, See, now you see a doorway and a cabinet, but the medium that the doorway and cabinet are in is the glass. But my friend looks confused and says, Well, I see a doorway and a cabinet.
Likewise, I say to my friend, Everything you are seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking—the medium in which these things are existing is awareness. But my friend looks confused and says, Well, I see that tree over there, and you sitting here talking to me.
We cicadas and learned pigeons cannot see the forest for the trees. The glass for the images. We see things, but we fail to see awareness.
~
Awareness is large.
Not larger than this or that thing. Large in the sense that it is the that in which things exist.
Not in the scientific sense, of course. (Not in the sense of acknowledging that there is a world outside of my mere awareness, a world that is going about its business.) In the phenomenological—the experiential—sense. (In the sense of noting what you are seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking.) In the scientific sense Mount Everest is larger than my body and smaller than our galaxy. But in the experiential sense: sitting here now and attending to my body, and Mount Everest, and our galaxy, I see that these things are here-and-now existing in my awareness. (These things are images in my mind’s eye, objects in my field of awareness.)
Awareness is large. Things—my body, Mount Everest, the galaxy—are small.
~
Things are small and equal.
In the following story we’ll meet Grandfather Peng, who lived eight hundred years, and the great cedars of antiquity, who lived sixteen thousand years. Grandfather Peng’s eight-hundred-years lifespan seems large, especially compared to the three-months lifespan of Summer Cicada. But compared to the sixteen-thousand-years lifespan of the great cedars, it is not. This sixteen-thousand-years lifespan is not large either. Consider the age of the sun (4.6 billion years and counting). No matter how relatively large a thing is compared to this or that thing, it is small relative to some other thing. Which is to say, all things are equal in their being small. They’re all, equally, small.
Here’s the wink in Chuang Tzu’s the Equal Tales. All stories, all things, all circumstances, are equal. (We’ll explore this idea in depth in Chapter 2, Discussions that make things equal.)
My cicada-like brain objects: It’s all well and good to say that if I cast my eye across the expanse of cosmic time, then an eight-hundred-years lifespan is equivalent to a twenty-years lifespan. That’s a nice trick. But I’m not standing out on the edge of cosmic time, I’m standing on planet Earth. And for me here on Earth a lifespan of twenty years is small and a lifespan of eight hundred years is large.
My brain is correct, but now I bring my attention to awareness (my here-and-now field of consciousness) and notice how things look. That mountain over there—it’s as small as my hand. The thoughts, I’m twenty years old, I’m eight hundred years old—they’re just words: blips of sound; bits of ink on this page. Neither bunch of words—bits of ink; blips of sound—makes the slightest difference to my expansive experience of the present moment.
Let’s return to the mirror metaphor. There in the glass we see a vase. There, a table. (Here, a mountain. Here, a hand. Here, a bunch of words.) As we tilt and move the mirror, the vase shrinks and expands, comes into view and out of view. Likewise for the table. Yes, the vase and the table are different. And yes, when the vase is now a tiny object, now a looming wall, that’s a difference. But the differently-sized vases and tables are all just bits of light dancing about in the glass.
From the point of view of awareness, things shift and dance as in a kaleidoscope, and we see that all of these shifting, dancing things are equally small, or small and equal. Only the ever-present field of awareness is large.
Small knowing doesn’t reach large knowing. Small years don’t reach large years.
Hearing that Summer Cicada doesn’t know spring and autumn we’d be forgiven for thinking that small knowing is like a person living in Australia who doesn’t know about the existence of China, and that large knowing is like a person who does. But the point of this analogy isn’t to say that we need to acquire more knowledge about the world, more knowledge of things. The point is that small knowing (knowing this and that thing) simply cannot lead to large knowing (being aware of awareness). Summer Cicada simply cannot know spring and autumn.
The gap between small knowing and large knowing is a quantum gap. A discontinuous leap. It cannot be breached by stages. We don’t see the glass by looking at more and more images. We don’t awake to awareness by looking at more and more things. It isn’t a matter of learning about the existence of China. Or of studying more and more exotic texts. Or of doing more and more detailed brain scans. (Look at a brain scan. Look at a thousand brain scans. Nowhere in those brain scans will you ever see awareness.) All of that is just things. Small knowing.
Large knowing is a leap into an entirely different orbit. It’s the perceptual shift from only seeing the images to also seeing the glass.
The cicada and the bird.
Well, here I am chirping away, little cicada that I am.
Here, too, is Chuang Tzu, chirping away.
Let’s take a moment to remember how, in those opening lines of the book, Of a Flock rose to flight so grandly, majestically, and—in silence.
As we read Chuang Tzu’s book and go about our noisy, cicada lives, may we remember to notice Of a Flock’s presence. Arisen from the northern darkness, his wings silently spanning to the horizon.
May we behold both:
The small, and the large.
Things, and awareness.
The chirping cicada, and the silent bird.
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