At one with Dao At 56 I started staring at the wall for 3 years. As I approach 59 I have been preparing to stare at another wall. I have been dancing with enlightenment and immortality and I am now ready for that wall and beyond that wall. 3 years becomes nothing. Time, space and spacetime become no-things. All is constant change. I embrace it. I embody it. In parts of my moment I am one with Dao. I cannot put that into words. But the words appear on the wall as I stare at it. Darkness and light are one. I am part of that. Some of us are not meant to mix in society. After years of being semi-hermit I finally went full hermit a couple of years ago and have never looked back (or regretted it). My ‘hero’ for decades was Lao Tzu, who disappeared off into the mountains.
Since becoming full hermit (and adopting my hermit name White Daffodil – a name I’ve carried as part of my identity for over twenty five years) I have experienced peace, personal growth and learned to let go and embody wu wei on a daily, moment by moment basis. I have embraced change and become myself. It’s what ‘normal’ folk would call these days ‘my best version of self’ but I just call ‘being.’ I do not advocate this way for others and I do not feel pride in my choices. Initially they were choices made partly from a sense of necessity in terms of ‘dealing’ with trauma and identity. But latterly the choice has become the most fulfilling ‘way’ I can imagine. I went virtual hermit at the same time as I became fully live hermit. I’d been semi-virtual hermit for some years too. After experimenting for a decade with online communities, participating, building, sharing, I came to the conclusion that for me the virtual world offers the same challenges as the real one in terms of human communication. And being virtual hermit also ‘fit’ me fine. Having achieved my own understanding of enlightenment, I felt perhaps I should challenge myself by rejoining society in some degree. I wondered if this was part of a necessary balance for life. I decided to explore it as an open circle. The virtual world offered the first opportunity. A Daoist community. Seemed like the kind of place, above all else, I could re-enter while remaining true to myself. But it sits uncomfortably with me. Covid taught me that my experience of the world is entirely different (and often opposed, or viewed as opposed) to that of society (and most people within it). While others struggled, I felt freed. The virtual community is similar. I feel distanced from the people in it. Even though they espouse the same basic philosophy, in actuality there are many people who (to me) seem to be on entirely different paths to my own. For many dao is fashion, or religion, or a way to ‘meet’ people. And while I can share, and share freely who I am, I do not feel that my sharing is valued or accepted any better than it has been in any other community context. Why poke the bear. Or, perhaps, using a metaphor from life experience today – chase the badger. In 58 years of life I had never, till today, seen a live badger. My first encounter with badger was one dark night some 25 years ago when my car hit and killed one. I carried that life/death around with the guilt of the student in the movie Spring,Summer… I felt a connection to badgers would endure my whole life because of that incident. Just over a decade ago, my dogs found a badger and killed it. I had to wrest it from their ravaging jaws, dead, and leave it dead at a place which then became known as ‘badger bottom’. Both dogs bear physical scars. I added another mental scar to my badger life/death connection. And this morning, I went out for a walk. I was meditating on community and the virtual hermit and whether it was time for me to engage or to leave for the mountains. Share or return. I got caught on the point of whether, by explaining my position I would be seen as ‘prideful’ or ‘abnormal’ and whether it was possible to engage with this group without having to ‘explain’ - it didn’t seem likely. I don’t want to explain myself to others, I just want to live, let live and (perhaps) share commonality. But what is the commonality, when I have to explain my ‘way’ and subject it to critique from the community ‘norm.’ And then, ahead of us, a badger. In broad daylight. It was nearly 8 in the morning. It was just past ‘the family trees’ (of significance for me in my writing for years) and of course the one dog not on the lead took off after it. The chase was on. The badger, glorious badger, ran much faster than I could imagine it able to do, a lumbering, loping speed but it was no match for the dog. In the same moment as I was marvelling in my first sight of an active live badger (not on a night vision trail cam) I was terrified that I was about to witness another badger death. I whistled and shouted and shouted and whistled. They took off into the forest. I stopped whistling, realising I was doing no good. I waited. Not long. The dog DID come back and I knew that the badger had eluded him. I had braced myself for the noises I remembered too well of a dog tackling a badger. They never came. I put the dog on lead. A short lead. I took ten very deep breaths to recentre myself and was about to step forward when, from over the brow of a hill, another badger appeared. This one came and stood a few yards ahead of us. Looked in our direction. It was a still day, maybe it smelled us. We certainly took it by surprise. I wanted to reach for my camera but to do so would be to compromise my hold on the lead and the more important thing was to keep both dogs from this badger. By the time I had almost worked out a strategy, this second badger had taken to his loping run into the forest. The dogs strained. I waited. I saw, in the undergrowth ahead, a sign that this badger had taken a different path to the first, and doubled back on itself. Our way was a path through the middle of where we’d last seen them. I gave everyone (myself included) time to calm down and we proceeded, dogs firmly on leads and under control. Was I under control? Not really. What an experience. The rest of the walk gave me time to reflect on the meaning I would derive from this experience. And here it is. If this was a fable these would be my morals. This is not a fable. It is my life. And these are just thoughts put into words. Waves fixed in timespace. The words can be deleted but they will never fully disappear. They now exist and are part of the Dao. Here they are: Some beings are not meant to be seen by others. Some beings need to be left to live their lives alone in peace. Sometimes the mere act of being seen can lead to one being chased down and torn apart. The message for me – my ‘way’ is hermit. My ‘way’ is badger. It is a natural bond we share. And only now, reflecting an hour later do I come to another thought. Today I saw two live badgers. In my life I have been responsible for the death of two badgers. Today I helped these two badgers stay alive, though I had the means by which they might die and would have carried that responsibility and worn it on top of the guilt I already carried regarding the taking of life, albeit vicariously or unintentionally. In one sense I might say I have been expiated for the ‘guilt’ of the badger deaths I’ve been responsible for. I have regained the balance that was lost. In another sense the badgers have shown me that we are connected and that it’s fine for me to be badger natured. To embrace that. And to accept that I am not meant to be seen by others. That I should be left to live my life alone in peace. (By alone I mean not in ‘society’, not entirely isolated from all others of my species). In common parlance the trivial world might define my position as #bemorebadger. But I am not of the hashtag world. Real or virtual. In conclusion I will interpret (since that is all we do in any communication or interaction) the badgers as metaphors and signs that I am on my own path and that being a hermit, real and virtual is perfectly fine for me. I have seen the wonder and the danger fused together in one yinyang moment of constant change experience. This moment offers me the opportunity to become entirely freed beyond society. I shall take that offer. I thank yinyang and humbug the badgers (as I so ‘name’ them) for the lesson and the opportunity they have gifted me. I feel freed from guilt now that I have managed to act responsibly at the moment of challenge. I am white daffodil. I live with badgers. That is my story. That is my reality. |
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