R-E-S-P-E-C-T?
It seems that all our lives we work incessantly to gain others' acceptance, perhaps respect, and maybe even admiration. But no matter what we accomplish or what heights we climb, other egos, and perhaps Nature itself, conspire to disabuse us of even a moment's grandiosity. Even the Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Teresa ... had detractors.
On a more mundane level, no matter how elated we may occasionally feel, we're quickly yanked back down to earth, especially by those closest to us!
Is it possible that life is neither about, nor has any interest in propping-up our ego?
“the thing about birds is that unlike anything else, you fall in love with them and they’ll never love you back. I just thought that was an incredible thing. It kind of totally demolishes your ego and the need for the gratification of mutual affection. It’s not going to be reciprocal. It kind of takes you down a bit in terms of your size and sense of importance. I think that’s one of the things I fell in love with – was the sense of proportion. I feel like birds put me in my place ... they made me feel that I was kind of unimportant.
There’s a moment, towards the end of the book, when I look at a peregrine falcon and talk about how the bird’s looking at me with complete indifference. I have a friend, Michael who works at a wildlife center, who said he recognizes that look. He sees it in animals, and it’s this look that speaks of another consciousness. When we’re looked at that way, he says that’s an important part of looking at birds, we learn that we may not always be looked at the way we want to be looked at, and maybe it throws into question our ideas about stewardship, and our ideas about our own importance in the scheme of things. So that kind of diminishment actually made me feel a kind of epiphany about the scale of humans in relation to other species. And that was pretty incredible as well.” Kyo Maclear
“A Big Year: What Urban Birdwatching Reveals about Being Human.” Tapestry with Mary Hynes, CBC Radio, April 16, 2017 www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry
"When we talk about immortality in the great spiritual traditions, we’re not talking about the immortality of the ego, needless to say. But we are talking about discovering that who we really are, and what is really fundamental in our state of being, is not born and does not die. And that is eternal life because life at that level is eternal."
Reginald A. Ray: "Buddhism, Trauma, and Healing." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii9AeQJjz9Q
