The Mindfulness of Natural History
Natural history is a practice of intentional, focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy. Simply put, it is paying attention to the bigger world outside our own heads. As Zen Roshi (and contributor to this volume) Robert Aitken noted, attention is prerequisite to intimacy. Natural history, then, is a means of becoming intimate with the big, wild world. For some, this involves watching birds visit a feeder outside a city apartment. For others, it’s an annual pilgrimage to witness the spring bloom of desert flowers. Flyfishers pay close attention to aquatic insect larvae, snorkelers gain joy watching the synchronized movements of reef fishes, and geologists trace the evolution of the Earth by following bends and folds in sedimentary rocks. The mind of a hunter is nothing if not attentive to nuances of animal movement and color. With some 30 million species living on this remarkable planet, across an endless variety of landscapes, and interacting in an infinite number of ways, there is literally no limit to the “nature” we can pay attention to.
Read more from Thomas Lowe Fleischner’s essay by visiting this link.