How Things Work - Doha Academy of Tertiary Studies

BOX 3.1. here
experiential Understanding 59
We are always somewhere. Wherever we are, we are always not just at
but in some particular “here” that is not “there.” We stand somewhere,
sit somewhere. In words and abstractions (thinking, saying), our minds
may wander from this gentle but unforgiving reality, but we cannot
escape being in some here-ness, wherever we are.
We breathe the air here. This place enters us. We breathe in or do
not breathe in the pollen that causes some of us hay fever in the spring.
(And yes, we are always here at some particular time.)
Moment by moment, always, restlessly, we jolt, bump, jostle or
caress the here-ness of here. We shed a tiny fragment of dead skin here,
leave a footprint, snap this twig, swallow water from this stream, touch
moss.
Living and dying, we participate in the great cycles of being. Ashes
to ashes, dust to dust, some here receives us back into itself. And here
nurtures or erodes us, even as we nurture or erode here’s here-ness.
We breathe and eat here. What we eat, from here or there, was nurtured
or torn from its locatedness somewhere—its being-there, its being
in the here-ness of there. Ego-centric, we may think it made and made
over for us, but it is made for us no more than we are made and made
over, not just for ourselves, but for Being.
There is no exemption from being here, wherever we are.
Nor has here, in its here-ness, any exemption from our being here.
It does not express feelings about our being here in words, in saying in
any human language. Here expresses its relationship to us in continued
capacities to be or be transformed, mute of language but not of being.
It would be best if we could reconcile ourselves to the consequences of
this brute fact—sooner rather than later. We leave a footprint in the soil
here. We savor and swallow here the fruits of the earth brought to us
from some here, some other sacred place. We inhale and exhale here,
and clutter or clean the air that blows about the globe, taking traces of
our here-ness everywhere.
The soil of here travels slowly. Water rises or runs through here’s
catchments to enter oceans or evaporate into air here. Here’s air circles
the earth, connecting our breath and fates to the breath and fates of
every living thing and every other thing forever. Our doing—what is
done—is done. We may want to but we cannot deny that we are here,
that we were there, that we left a footprint.
(cont.)