I’ve always found Celtic knots attractive. I think they are both beautiful and fantastic symbols of important characteristics of reality – the indivisible inter-connectedness of everything, and the dynamic, flowing qualities of Nature.
Alan Watts, that great teacher of Zen principles, talks about the reality of inter-connectedness in one of his essays. He says –
interdependence and virtual identity with all other forms of life which the divisive and emboxing methods of our current way of thought prevent us from experiencing……….The so–called physical world and the so–called human body are a single process, differentiated only as the heart from the lungs or the head from the feet………..our intellectual and scientific “establishment” is, in general, still spellbound by the myth that human intelligence and feeling are a fluke of chance in an entirely mechanical and stupid universe—as if figs would grow on thistles or grapes on thorns………wouldn’t it be more reasonable to see the entire scheme of things as continuous with our own consciousness and the marvelous neural organization which, shall we say, sponsors it?
I love that word he uses – “emboxing”. I’ve never seen that word before. Maybe he invented it, but it’s great. The way we label and classify after focusing on only certain aspects of any phenomenon separates and divides. It puts whatever we are looking at into a box. When we apply this technique to ourselves we divide ourselves from the Nature, from the Earth, and even from the Universe.
Dividing ourselves from Reality produces a dangerous delusion. As Watts says, “wouldn’t it be more reasonable to see the entire scheme of things as continuous with our own consciousness and the marvelous neural organization which, shall we say, sponsors it?”
I particularly like his reference to the human body – because if we really did understand ourselves as intimately and inextricably connected to the universe then maybe we’d stop classifying whatever is not “us” as “them” or “it”. Then we would have a chance to create a world which was more like the human body – made of well-differentiated parts which relate to each other in mutually beneficial ways – the reality of integration, not the delusion of division and separateness that seems to result in exploitation, plunder, killing and rape.
Heroes Not Zombies 