Brokeback Ocean

Zen teachers caution us not to follow the example of the man whose sword fell overboard and who put a notch in the side of the boat to mark the place, so that he could come back and find it later. Turning our minds towards getting back to some special experience probably means that we are ignoring actual life. The boat is still moving, and the ocean never stops.

Annie Proulx ends the story "Brokeback Mountain" this way:

"There was some open space between what he [Ennis] knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it."

It took quite a few years for the Jack Twist in me to see this "open space" as anything other than a problem to be solved. I tried to solve it many times. I think many "queer" people do. Especially if we believe that our love will seldom find expression (and in some times and places there has been little reason to think otherwise), we may notch the boat at our first experience of love's recognition, and try our best to return to that place, to construct our lives around the possibility of returning.

Maybe those attempts succeed for a while (probably not forever) or maybe they don't ever succeed again, but in either case, we are likely to become more and more frustrated as we realize that we can't return to Brokeback (or Brideshead, or wherever). But maybe after many failures we can sit still long enough to recognize that the "open space" is not a problem at all. It is indeed the very space in which we live out our life. The fact that we won't return to the same experience is surely the reality of our life, but the event we can't let go of is not really separate from our life, nor does it define our life. That space between what our bodies know and what our minds try to believe is the only place human life can take place. The Ennis Del Mar in us can honor the experience without being tied up in it.

Hmm... what is of the sea (Del Mar) keeps moving, and does not Twist in bonds to that one event. I know, I know, it was a beautiful, life-illuminating moment. But is it really separate from the rest of your life?

As Jack thinks to himself in the story: Let be, let be.

The Anthropic Principle: Stephen Hawking and Master Xuansha

I've been lucky to encounter Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. (It was in my parents' living room when I went back to visit last month, next to the sudokus). But have a look at this:

"...in a universe that is large or infinite in space and/or time, the conditions necessary for the development of intelligent life will be met only in certain regions that are limited in space and time. The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like the rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty."

"The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron.... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. For example, if the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different, stars either would have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium, or else they would not have exploded.... Most sets of values would have given rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at their beauty."

Let me get this right. We marvel at the universe (our own bodies and minds included) because it seems so unlikely that things could have arisen just this way. But if things had arisen any other way, we wouldn't be here to marvel. Whether we understand the whys and hows or not, our life does not arise separately from the structure of the universe. Welcome home!

Of course it has been a thousand years since Xuansha Shibei (835-908) said "The entire universe is one bright pearl -- what's the use of understanding?"

Have you heard it said another way? Or how you would say it?