Enjoy the view

Low clouds blocked the morning January sun as nests of grey mist hugged the rolling hills, flattening the light, making everything in the high desert seem closer than it really was. It had rained and looked as if it might soon rain again. A handful of cows stood motionless in the landscape.

They don’t look up much, those cows. Most of the time, when there is grass to be eaten, their heads are pointed downward, focused on the business of grazing. On a morning such as this one, on a stretch of Arizona highway with level road, low traffic and long vistas, I could, with soft gaze, appreciate the light and the scenery. And I could wonder if animals that live amidst that scenery ever pause themselves to take in the view.

The first answer is no: cows don’t have higher consciousness and awareness. And yet they experience certain emotions, such as fear; photos of cows being taken to slaughter reveal clear panic in their eyes and faces. Other animals likewise demonstrate emotional responses to a variety of situations. I don’t need to anthropomorphize canine capability to recognize happiness, sorrow, fear, and distress in my dogs. It’s there. It’s real.

Sure, it’s easy to assume that birds singing in a springtime sunrise are not happy but only announcing themselves to each other and potential mates. It’s easy to make such scientifically informed assumptions because birds do not write us letters, emails, or leave any permanent evidence that they like what they feel or are capable of sharing it. But is awareness required for participation in beauty?

I remember the first time I consciously experienced silence, complete and absolute quiet. I was hiking along a plateau trail overlooking the Colorado River. Because my feet were tired inside a heavy pair of old leather boots, I paused to rest atop a rock outcropping. The sun warmed my brow. I closed my eyes. Suddenly, I fell into, and felt, nothing. I thought nothing. I heard nothing. There wasn’t even a buzz of emptiness in my inner ear. There was simply no thing. I was not there. If I didn’t open my eyes, or move, or even breathe, I had no evidence that I existed apart from what existed around me. I wasn’t asleep but instead awake in a way that I’d never previously felt. The realization jolted me out of the unifying moment. My eyes flew open to confirm I was really there, I was still really me, still in but apart from where I was.

My consciousness got in the way of my being.

Cartoons such as Larson’s Farside have depicted the inner life of cows and other animals. We laugh at their insights and perspective. We don’t really believe it though, that inner life. We don’t really think that cows know they are part of something wondrous, something sometimes magical. We understand that a cow knows nothing of the grandeur it inhabits, even when no one is watching.

And so we can miss the point, and the experience, of the majestic. Because our access to splendor is not necessarily through the avenues of our minds. In fact, our taste of the whole may rely on the opposite of mental awareness and acknowledgement. For grandeur may instead be enfolded within the absence of differentiation, delicately wrapped – paradoxically and parenthetically – within the boundary-free space that knows not me and you, this and that, here and there, above and below, reflection and witness. Grandeur may mysteriously rest in the enjoyment of knowing nothing of knowing.

A cow grazes on a plain beneath a cloudy sky. It does not need a view. It is a view.