Accessing Knowing
Originally published April 23, 2020.
My daughter is my hero! A radical shining activist studying political science and all sorts of fancy-worded things I don’t understand. She sends me the greatest book recommendations, including as one of the last books I was able to check out from the library before they closed due to Covid-19, this title: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, "As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. Besides giving great hope and inspiration, this fascinating book also contains a chapter on “Land as Pedagogy,” which contains a discussion of indigenous Nishnaabeg education. There I found the following quote, which strikes me as extremely relevant to my own search for sources of knowledge in traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy, both in general, in the context of climate change, and especially in this current pandemic when the complete failure and inadequacy of biomedicine and other modern systems of knowing has become more obvious than ever before.
Like governance and leadership and every other aspect of reciprocated life, education comes from the roots up. It comes from being enveloped by the land. An individual’s intimate relationship with the spiritual and physical elements of creation is at the center of a learning journey that is lifelong. You can’t graduate from Nishnaabewin; it is a gift to be practiced and reproduced. And while each individual must have the skills and knowledge to ensure their own safety, survival, and prosperity in both the physical and spiritual realm, their existence is ultimately dependent upon intimate relationships of reciprocity, humility, honesty, and respect with all elements of creation, including plants and animals.
Nishnaabeg-Gikendaasowin, or Nishnaabeg knowledge, originates in the spiritual realm, coming to individuals through dreams, visions, and ceremony and through the process of gaa-izhi-zhaawendaagoziyaang—that which is given lovingly to us by the spirits. This makes sense because this is the place where our Ancestors reside, where spiritual beings exist, and where the spirits of living plants, animals, and humans interact. To gain access to this knowledge, one has to align oneself within with the forces of the implicate order through ceremony, ritual, and the embodiment of the teachings one already carries.
I could continue quoting the rest of this chapter because it is so relevant to traditional Chinese ways of thinking about knowledge, the role of the ancestors, and the importance of ceremony and the spiritual dimension. While the danger of cultural appropriation must never be ignored, her notion of “aligning oneself within with the forces of the implicate order” strikes me as somehow expressing an aspect of the Chinese notion of dé 德 “virtue-power” as the outward manifestation of alignment with the Dào 道.
I would never suggest that we can equate these two ways of looking at the world, and of course I don’t know much about the indigenous Canadian author’s world, or really about the ancient Chinese world either. The piece that gives me hope here is that I can see a shared humanity, that there are so many other systems of knowing out there, of being in the world, of honoring our animal and plant relations and of communicating with and learning from ancestors and spirits, than the currently (still?) dominant global model of rational, materialistic, scientific, human-centered, hierarchical, progress- and growth-oriented, exploitative and extractive model of economic and material growth at all costs, which has been causing such horrible suffering for centuries. I am neither an economist nor an environmental scientist nor a politician. But even I can see the utter failure of what used to be our “normal” way of life until Madame Corona hit and brought us humans to a screeching halt this spring, giving the rest of the world a chance for a deep breath.
In the ancient Chinese classics, the sages are celebrated for their quality of 明 míng, of vision or “illumination,” the ability to see the Dào in its infinite transformations, and thus to align themselves with this Dào in their actions and non-actions, manifesting as 德 dé “virtue-power.” How can we each cultivate this “virtue-power” in this particular moment? And what do the ancient Chinese classics, medical and philosophical, perhaps have to contribute to this effort? Of course, in the end, it all comes down to this:
道可道非常道
The Dào that can be “Dào-ed” is not the constant Dào.
According to Laozi’s famous words, the path that can be walked on, that somebody else can follow, the teaching that can be expressed in words, the Dào that can be turned into a Dào, is not the real thing. This is the knowledge that transcends words and human intellect, and that is what I personally turn to the ancient Chinese classics for in moments like this. May you find your own source of inspiration during this time, when we are forced to make peace with not knowing, with sitting in the darkness that is the eventual source of new light emerging.
