512
Teddy Roosevelt had removed from libraries because he believed Long was exaggerating his experiences out in the woods, once wrote, “The eye of a wild animal is
even more wonderful … [and] if you ever look into it in close quarters, you will
have a real … lesson in natural history. I have known hunters to throw aside their
rifles and to be changed men for life having looked once into the eyes of a
dying deer”.
31
This was cited by Charles Fisher in his powerful study on the nature of “discontent,” on death, suffering, Buddhism, and Darwin. Fisher compares the erratic, all
too-morbid life spans of various species, like Dahl sheep, raccoons, sparrowhawks,
moles, porcupines, and bears. In assessing the types of pain and suffering our hunter/
gatherer ancestors (no less riven with stress and anxiety) must have experienced, he
also considers contrasts between Buddha’s time and our own. The goal is to form
some kind of middle-path comfort, in spite of the enormity of suffering sweeping
across the otherwise alleged calms of so many gardens of Eden. How animals actually die; people eaten by crocodiles, lions, a multitude of deformities as deciphered
in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s sixteenth-century crowd scenes, mortality rates over
the past tens of thousands of years in humans, and the typical decay and diminution
of the human body in contemporary terms, as it ages.
32
Concluding with the famed
ecologist Paul Sears’ (1891–1990) characterization, “The face of the earth is a
graveyard and so it has always been”.
33
54.3 What Do We See?
Despite a seemingly omnipotent motif of such miseries (Darwin himself is known
to have suffered throughout most of his life—“he had an organic problem, exacerbated by depression”),
34
humanity is conditioned to thinking that with its recent
evolution (domestication, the Stone and Copper Ages), the taming of companion
animals and store-housing of plants, origination of metrics, surplus, and coordinated geopolitical hierarchies, that ethical injunctions arose to serve a biological
choreography comprised of neighbors. And thus, the great debate, as described by
anthropologist Peter J. Wilson, between Freud and those ascribing to the concept of
“love thy neighbor as thyself.” It was supposed to make the evolution of our
domestication easier. Freud, however, insisted that it simply brought the targets of
31 Cited by Charles Fisher, in his book Dismantling Discontent – Buddha’s Way Through Darwin’s
World, Elite Books, Santa Rosa, CA, 2007, p. 96, from William Long’s book, Mother Nature,
Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull, Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York, 1923,
pp. 184–191.
32 ibid., pp. 85–185.
33 ibid., p. 180, citing Paul Sears, Deserts on the March, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman,
OK, 1935.
34 “Darwin’s Illness revealed,” by A.Campbell and S. Matthews, Postgraduate Medical Journal,
PMC, NCBI Resources, 2005, April; 81(954): 248–251. https://doi.org/10.1136/pgmj.2004.025569,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1743237/ Accessed May 23, 2020.
54 The Unfettered Gaze
Teddy Roosevelt had removed from libraries because he believed Long was exaggerating his experiences out in the woods, once wrote, “The eye of a wild animal is
even more wonderful … [and] if you ever look into it in close quarters, you will
have a real … lesson in natural history. I have known hunters to throw aside their
rifles and to be changed men for life having looked once into the eyes of a
dying deer”.
31
This was cited by Charles Fisher in his powerful study on the nature of “discontent,” on death, suffering, Buddhism, and Darwin. Fisher compares the erratic, all
too-morbid life spans of various species, like Dahl sheep, raccoons, sparrowhawks,
moles, porcupines, and bears. In assessing the types of pain and suffering our hunter/
gatherer ancestors (no less riven with stress and anxiety) must have experienced, he
also considers contrasts between Buddha’s time and our own. The goal is to form
some kind of middle-path comfort, in spite of the enormity of suffering sweeping
across the otherwise alleged calms of so many gardens of Eden. How animals actually die; people eaten by crocodiles, lions, a multitude of deformities as deciphered
in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s sixteenth-century crowd scenes, mortality rates over
the past tens of thousands of years in humans, and the typical decay and diminution
of the human body in contemporary terms, as it ages.
32
Concluding with the famed
ecologist Paul Sears’ (1891–1990) characterization, “The face of the earth is a
graveyard and so it has always been”.
33
54.3 What Do We See?
Despite a seemingly omnipotent motif of such miseries (Darwin himself is known
to have suffered throughout most of his life—“he had an organic problem, exacerbated by depression”),
34
humanity is conditioned to thinking that with its recent
evolution (domestication, the Stone and Copper Ages), the taming of companion
animals and store-housing of plants, origination of metrics, surplus, and coordinated geopolitical hierarchies, that ethical injunctions arose to serve a biological
choreography comprised of neighbors. And thus, the great debate, as described by
anthropologist Peter J. Wilson, between Freud and those ascribing to the concept of
“love thy neighbor as thyself.” It was supposed to make the evolution of our
domestication easier. Freud, however, insisted that it simply brought the targets of
31 Cited by Charles Fisher, in his book Dismantling Discontent – Buddha’s Way Through Darwin’s
World, Elite Books, Santa Rosa, CA, 2007, p. 96, from William Long’s book, Mother Nature,
Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull, Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York, 1923,
pp. 184–191.
32 ibid., pp. 85–185.
33 ibid., p. 180, citing Paul Sears, Deserts on the March, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman,
OK, 1935.
34 “Darwin’s Illness revealed,” by A.Campbell and S. Matthews, Postgraduate Medical Journal,
PMC, NCBI Resources, 2005, April; 81(954): 248–251. https://doi.org/10.1136/pgmj.2004.025569,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1743237/ Accessed May 23, 2020.
54 The Unfettered Gaze