Clarence
Valley Environment Centre
Winter 2000 Newsletter
A Parable for Joeys
The
other night when I was marauding through a human's house I chanced upon
a children's book. There's something about the look, the smell of those
battered big type brightly coloured hard cover books that touch my heart.
Maybe its a memory of a simpler time. A time when I too was a child.
I pawed open the cover. It was a book of riddle. My eyes came to rest on a familiar conundrum. It totally grabbed my attention for an instant, until the smell of danger jolted me. An angry human was on my tail wielding a broom.
Humans! Now there's an enigmatic species for you. Sometimes I despair of ever understanding them.
Back in the safety of my casuarina tree the riddle stayed in my mind.
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
I'd heard it before, except in the opossum version it's an eagle chick. When I first heard it as a younster my imagination was stirred and my reason challenged. Now the riddle had become almost a cliche for 'don't even try to understand this one'. How easily curiosity about the mystery and magic of life can fade as one grows older.
I was chewing it over the next evening with some of the local wallabies. They gave me some interesting insights. Interesting enough to stir me to write them down.
Wallabies are kind of the bodhisattvas of us timeless ones. Wise but invisible in their actions. Helping but not intruding. Absorbing cruelty without becoming vengeful. I have a lot of respect for wallabies. Most of us wild animals live the life of anchorites. We have no possessions. When tired we sleep, when hungry we eat. We are masters of living in the moment. But within this tradition wallabies stand out.
Anyway our discussion of the eagle chick and the egg soon led to the revelation of knowledge which is apparently well known in the wallaby world - but was certainly new to me. They saw this riddle as indicative of an important aspect of the human condition.
One of the elders explained further.
"You know humans spend so little time pondering mysteries like this these days. Now it is something for children's books. In the old days the wise people would immerse themselves in the meaning of life - whether it be through logic and reason in the realm of philosophy or through life experience as in the mystical and shamanic traditions."
"Now humans have almost given up. Certainly there is a fringe occupied with these issues but the majority are hell bent on making money. They believe it will buy comfort and security. Humans have a myth that the possession of large amounts of money will make them happy, even though informed humans assert there isn't any link between money and happiness. But the myth is powerful and persists despite the facts." The wallabies agree that this myth is in fact erroneous and leads to great sadness.
The wallabies have their own story on the purpose of human life. It is told to all joeys at a very early age. Considering its ancient origins I was surprised that to the best of my knowledge, no opossum had ever heard it before. But then that's what wallabies are like.
It takes time and a Zen like empty mind for their stories to unfold. If you approach them with strong opinions, which being a opossum I often did, they will never dispute you. It is their nature to go along. So in my ignorance I often thought that the wallabies agreed with me. It is only now as I become wiser and less sure of anything that I'm able to see them in a different light. What I thought was passivity and ignorance is in fact a manifestation of the detachment of true sages.
For ones that live such humble lives it always surprise me the level of abstract thought that pervades the wallaby kingdom. My encounter with this story, which is after all just a parable for joyes, only reinforces my admiration for them.
The wallabies likened human habitation on this planet to the growth of that eagle embryo inside its egg. For them some basic questions that humans need to address are underpinned by this analogy.
Like the embryo uses the yoke to grow so too humans use the resources of this planet. A self-reflective embryo with full knowledge of its shell enclosed biosphere would surely feel anxiety as the size of its appetite increases. The yoke grows smaller, the embryo bigger and hungrier. But of course we who dwell outside the shell know that nature has a new unforseen existence for the embryonic eagle once it is strong enough to break its shell.
The wallabies concern for humans is that they have lost sight of their situation. The majority want to make themselves comfortable as embryos, but nature is not supportive of this position in the long term. Hence the sadness, anxiety and depression which wallabies perceive as endemic in human society.
Wallabies know that humans once placed supreme value on leaving the embryonic ego bubble stage of existence. But now the great purpose has been put aside. It is perceived as too hard, or worse still, not possible. It saddens the wallabies that humans who think like this cannot perceive wallaby reality, or indeed any non-human reality.
Wallabies view the ongoing conflict between environmentalists and developers as important but unresolvable if the debate is not widened to include the purpose of human life. According to the wallabies it is of course worng for humans to squander resources. But equally it is wrong for humans not to use the resources nature has provided to help them break their shell.
Although wallabies have this wisdom, which as a opossum I think is valuable for humans and personally I would shout it from the rooftops, the wallabies are not so inclined. They have faith that nature is unfolding as it must. Humans are working out their place. They can be resourceful at fulfilling desires and their most basic desire is survival. Humans do best with their backs against the wall. Give them abundance and their lives tend towards meaninglessness and pettiness. They have their own lessons to learn. Maybe they'll break through before the 'yoke' is gone, maybe they won't. Either way the sun will continue to shine.
The
Opossum
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