Original Essays
Digging Holes
by Lin Jensen
One revolutionary insight consequent of the Buddha's enlightenment is that there's no such thing as a single occurrence, any event being an event at large. He saw the extent to which the whole of the psycho/physical world is linked together as one mutually responsive organism. Not only that, but the responsiveness, as the Buddha realized, is not sequential (one event causing another in time) but simultaneous (a reciprocal and mutual engagement of one event with another).
To seek a metaphor here, it would be like a painter portraying a scene on canvas so that the margins of the canvas enclose a microcosm of the world comprised of the figures and shapes the painter places there. If the painter wants to add a tuft of grass at the base of a tree or darken the sky a little or draw in the figure of a distant woman on horseback, the change will be registered throughout the entire scene. The instant the painter puts the brush to the canvas to add, change, or remove the slightest detail, the world of the canvas is altered throughout. The Buddha clearly saw that this reciprocal responsiveness is the nature of the world we live in, and his most direct statement of that is found in his teaching of the paticca samuppada or "dependent co-arising" as the Pali term is often translated to mean in English.
The Buddha's teaching of the paticca samuppada is given in both a longer analysis of a chain of interdependent events, typically 12 in number, and in a briefer formulation that is easier to grasp in its entirety:
This being, that becomes.
From the arising of this, that arises.
This not being, that becomes not.
From the ceasing of this, that ceases.
What's clear from this formulation is that "this" and "that" are linked in mutual
responsiveness, not so much as a matter of one causing another as a matter of
mutual adjustment to one another — the instant one element moves the other
moves with it because both elements are of one body. In a world of such seamless
and simultaneous response, no possibility exists for an isolated act of any sort; any
action taken in particular is an action taken in general. It's an insight that accords
with a fundamental tenet of deep ecology: namely, that you can never do just one thing in nature. I can't so much as dig a hole in the ground without stacking up a pile of dirt, and that pile of dirt has to end up somewhere. So it might be good for me to watch where I dig holes and for what purpose and to what end.
responsiveness, not so much as a matter of one causing another as a matter of
mutual adjustment to one another — the instant one element moves the other
moves with it because both elements are of one body. In a world of such seamless
and simultaneous response, no possibility exists for an isolated act of any sort; any
action taken in particular is an action taken in general. It's an insight that accords
with a fundamental tenet of deep ecology: namely, that you can never do just one thing in nature. I can't so much as dig a hole in the ground without stacking up a pile of dirt, and that pile of dirt has to end up somewhere. So it might be good for me to watch where I dig holes and for what purpose and to what end.
To begin with, consider the fact that a handful of typical garden soil contains billions to hundreds of billions of soil microorganisms. If I dig a hole of even modest diameter, I'm displacing an incalculable number of such organisms, exposing them to the ultraviolet rays of the sun. And I'm probably dislodging earthworms as well, and disrupting the underground earthworm channels that transport water and oxygen to the roots of plants. A balanced soil is an active and vibrant environment. So when I'm out digging holes, I'm digging into a soil biota that houses not only earthworms and microorganisms but woodlice, beetles, centipedes, slugs, snails, ants, yeasts, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa, all of these playing an essential role in maintaining the soil's health. And what about the shovel I'm digging with? How did that common garden tool end up in my hands? From what woods was the hickory gotten and in what shop was it fashioned into a handle? Where was the ore mined and smelted and forged to make the blade? How were these resources transported to the places of manufacture and eventually to the hardware store where I bought the shovel to bring home? And how were the trucks powered that brought them to the store? And for that matter, what powers the legs and back and arms of the human body that digs the hole? Far from being a singular action, the hole I'm digging in the backyard is an action of the entire universe, requiring a revolving planet, sunlight, water, an atmosphere with oxygen and carbon dioxide, an earth comprised of soil and stored metals. Every action you or I take in nature is like that, one little juncture in an intricate web of interrelationships reaching backward into the past and forward into the future. It is for that reason that we can never do just one thing in nature.
It's not necessarily a bad thing to dig a hole, or for that matter to plow up an entire field or plant a crop of potatoes or harvest hickory wood for handles. The problem comes when we don't consider what else is happening. Recently, Butte County in northern California where I live recorded an increasing occurrence of West Nile virus in humans from which a few infected individuals have died of a severe neurological disorder associated with the virus. And so the Butte County Mosquito Abatement District began spraying with pyrethroids to kill off the mosquitoes, driving through residential neighborhoods with a truck releasing a pyrethroid fog and flying over wetlands and agricultural fields spraying from overhead. The intention was to save human life, which at first glance seems like a reasonable thing to do, except for the fact that the pyrethroid spray isn't specific to the mosquito vector but kills off every other insect it reaches as well. After a mosquito abatement truck fogged the street I live on, the crickets grew silent and haven't been heard from since. Not only that, but mosquito predators like the dragonfly are killed off along with the mosquitoes. Much worse, and more threatening in the long run than West Nile virus is to human life, is the fact that you can't kill mosquitoes by means of insecticides without killing the essential pollinating insects upon which we rely for many of our foods. And further unintended consequences of the spraying with insecticides are seen in the reduction of insect-eating birds who are themselves mosquito predators, and the sickening of humans who are inadvertently exposed to insecticides and whose numbers far exceed the numbers of West Nile virus cases reported nationwide. Here in Butte County, we set out to get rid of the mosquitoes and ended up exposing people to an increased risk of breast cancer in women, lowered sperm counts in men, incidents of severe respiratory disorders, and irreversible nervous system damage. There's an old saying that exhorts one to "keep your eye squarely on the target," a practice that's reputed to be a good thing. In dealing with the earth's ecosystem and our place within that system, it's not necessarily such a good thing. It's much better to keep your eye on whatever's around the target as well, allowing yourself to be distracted from any single-minded focus long enough and often enough to consider peripheral consequences.
Along with the fact that I can never do just one thing in nature is the fact that I can never get rid of anything. I might like to think that I throw things away, but "away" is always somewhere. In that sense, I can't really "consume" anything either; I just pass it along downstream in one form or another. Both consuming and discarding are acts of redistribution, and never cause anything to be used up or to go away. It's good for me to keep this in mind when I set out the trash for North Valley Disposal or pile up leaves and clippings for the city to cart away or purchase something (anything!) at one of the area stores. Nothing that can be bought and carted home is ever taken out of circulation. If I buy packaged or bottled goods of any sort, every scrap of packaging or plastic or glass is either reused, recycled, or ends up in the landfill. If it gets burned, it ends up as ash and greenhouse gases. Even the food you and I "consume" eventually goes downstream and has to be dealt with if we are to avoid poisoning ourselves with our own excrement.
I understand now that the interventions I make into the ecosystem will reverberate throughout the universe. And I know that my actions can be either helpful or damaging. Nature has its own wisdom, an inherent harmony born of natural consequence. If I can act in accord with that harmony, I can shape my actions to the earth's own economy and thereby avoid introducing harmful consequences.
I try be mindful these days of what I do, and of where and to what consequence I do it. If I'm intent on "digging a hole" (either an actual hole or understood as an analogue for any other interaction with the body of the earth), I try to notice where the dirt is piling up.
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Lin Jensen is the critically acclaimed author of the memoir Bad Dog! A Memoir of Love, Beauty, and Redemption in Dark Places and Pavement: Reflections on Mercy, Activism, and Doing "Nothing" for Peace, a fearless and funny account of curbside social action.
