DESIROUS ATTACHMENT & LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE SAN BUSHMAN OF THE KALAHARI

WHAT DO WE REALLY NEED TO BE HAPPY?

The rule of three for survival tells us that; we can live three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, three weeks without food and three months without love. We could add to that three hours without shelter or clothing if we lived in a cold climate. "Fire" and shelter are included in these basic essentials. 

If we extrapolate these principles to our modern world - clean air and water, wholesome food, a roof over our heads, a loving connection with our fellow humans and include energy (the equivalent of fire) for cooking, transport and communication we have all we really need.

On my first of many trip to the Bushmen I spent a blissful month with the Kua San in 1987 as well as an even smaller more remote group living in pristine circumstances that had not become fully exposed to cattle farms, game fences and wells. I gathered with the woman and hunted and trapped with the men in the day and experienced their singing and dancing at night. 

Their out of body healing trance dance is a subject all of its own (and can be viewed at www. davidcumes.com as well as their hunting and gathering techniques in another DVD - titled Wilderness Rapture.)

 WATER - THREE DAYS 

There is no natural water in the Kalahari and at that time the only water available was from sucking water from past rainfall out of a hollow tree stumps and from sip wells in the sand.  Tsama melons which were bitter were also used as well as large tubers growing deep in the earth (called "Baiee" by the Kua San.) These tubers retained enough water to be grated and squeezed out using a second plant that helped catalyze release of the moisture as well as offset the bitter taste. 

There were also wells that had been sunk by cattle ranchers that were usually too far away for them to reach or use effectively. Small, usually plastic containers. had replaced the traditional ostrich egg shells which had been traditionally buried in the ground for use in times of extreme need. 

This experience gave me an appreciation of what it is like to have water on tap.

FOOD - THREE WEEKS

Gathering of "veldkos" - food from the veld - was the main staple provided mainly by the women. Medicinal plants were also gathered for healing and spiritual needs. There were still guinea fowl, ostrich and koraan (a large bird) to trap as well as small antelope such as duiker and steenbok. Larger game had moved away but it was still possible to hunt gemsbok in some areas remote from the cattle ranches and the Tswana villages but too far away to be practical without transport. Around Dobe and Xai Xai further north and west near the Namibian border and in the Central Kalahari hunting of bigger game with other clans of Bushmen was more prolific at that time as were large predators.

 Most of the food came from berries and a rich variety of roots and tubers. Meat was a treat, usually acquired by an ingenious number of traps designed specially for each particular animal. It was easy, after a time, to see how to make a trap but to know where to put it and conceal it from the pray required years of technological know how. 

THREE HOURS - FIRE & SHELTER

Fire was provided by the timeless technology of the hand drill and a tinder bundle which required a significant amount of skill.

The San had little use for shelter. They had previously been nomadic and their rudimentary shelters were only used in times of rain. They slept together around the fire at night for warmth and to avoid predators. In the heat of the summer days when temperatures reached 120 degrees fahrenheit in the shade an acacia tree provided protection from the sun and activities were delayed for when it was cool. Fire was essential for the cold desert winter nights as well as a skin kaross for a blanket. 

The San had an intimate relationship with all the 

 "Beings" and the Elements 

The Still Beings - earth, sand and rocks

Growing .. - plants and trees

Wild .. - game and fowl

and the Talking or Human Beings

THREE MONTHS - WITHOUT LOVE

 The Ancestors teach that ...

Everything was done by consensus and together - they were egalitarian without any leader and if anything the small clans were  more matriarchal. There was little or any judgment of others and a presiding humility as as well as humorous techniques of keeping hubris in check. They seemed to have an unconditional love for the children and universal self acceptance or unconditional positive regard for each other. Since they had no written language or scriptures this enlightened state seemed to arise purely out of their intimate contact with Nature and their supreme need to love Her and care for Her as well as each other in order to survive. In those days they were happy even with the bare survival essentials and with the little they had.

Even divination was done with consensus (photo below.)  The powerful healing dance was a welcomed clan event which spontaneously happened whenever tensions needed to be diffused or healing was necessary. The San healers were some of the most powerful I have ever experienced.

Their clapping and dancing coupled with complex chanting and accentuated by the rattles around their ankles around the fire was something otherworldly underneath the brilliant Kalahari sky. The dancing and trancing would often carry all night transporting everyone who was participating into an altered state of consciousness to a greater or lesser extent.

The Ancestors say that sacred song..

Sadly since Western influence the San are increasingly aware of what they do not have and are now tuning in to material wants as we do. As with many indigenous peoples alcohol is also being substituted for "spirit."

 The trance dance still carries on but maybe it has lost some of its power as they lose contact with their habitat and thus their technological wilderness know-how also slowly dissipates. They have been kicked out of their Garden of Eden and are now surrounded by the "stuff" provided by our 

Tree of  material Knowledge most of which is unattainable. 

They are not the happier for it just as Western spiritual seekers have found out for themselves.

Click to highlight the link below and the play. Chants and clapping recorded in the Kalahari at night during Trance dancing.

(Their chants interspersed by a song received by me in a dream  where I was participating in Bushmen activities.)

-_MP3s/05_Bushman_Bush_Mantra.mp3

ANOTHER ASPECTS OF EGO -
DESIROUS ATTACHMENT 

 In the last blog we attended to Ego or "self-cherishing." 
Desirous Attachment the Buddha described 
- is being attached to the object of our desire
- another aspect of the Ego identity. 
In this blog we will talk about 
attending to needs rather than wants!

 There is nothing wrong with having something but there is a karmic consequence if that object possesses us. Having things that look, and make us feel good, enriches our personas and boosts our egos but at the same time separates us from our Higher Selves.

We are inundated with the indoctrination of materialism and sophisticated marketing that distort the reality of what is truly meaningful to us in life. This makes us buy things because they are sexy and up to date. Commercials tout that if you have a Subaru you have "love" and other car makers try to manipulate us by trying to invoke a mystical, ecstatic almost religious experience with their visuals. Planned obsolescence with the ever increasing allure of totally fascinating but useless technology that make us lazy or occupies our attention is everywhere we turn.
Steve Jobs defined this best in saying; 
our job at Apple is not to give people what they need but to tell them what they want.

One cannot separate the concept of Impermanence from the understanding of Desirous Attachment. They are interconnected.  

The Ancestors teach...

We cannot take anything with us at the end of the day. The only thing we take with us when we leave the planet is our Karma.

 What do we really need rather than want? If our basic survival needs are fulfilled we can be happy. The San Bushmen hunter-gathers of the Kalahari desert were happy (with the emphasis on were) until we arrived and they discovered all the "stuff" that we had that they did not. Our Tree of Knowledge kicked them out of their Garden of Eden, where nature provided everything they needed including a rich and unparalleled healing and spiritual technology.

The rule of three for survival tells us that; we can live three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, three weeks without food and three months without love. We could add to that three hours without shelter or clothing if we lived in a cold climate. Fire and shelter are included in these basic essentials. 

If we extrapolate these principles to our modern world - clean air, and water, wholesome food, a roof over our heads, connection with fellow beings and include energy (the equivalent of fire) for cooking, transport and communication we have all we really need.

My personal experience is that whenever I downscale and get rid of "stuff," I have far less to maintain or worry about and feel lighter and happier. I now have more room for the essentials of life.

Click on the link to highlight then play

-_MP3s/01_Let_the_Days_Go_By.mp3

KARMA & SUBORDINATING EGO 
TO THE HIGHER SELF

The ego has many guises including ...

Persona is also the little self of ego and is how we want to present ourselves to the world. Many pay more attention to this appearance rather than working towards the Higher or Big Self. 
Jesus stressed that 
those who lose themselves (as in little self,) would find themSelves (as in Higher Self.)
For many knowledge or technical expertise can be a way of presenting their persona in a more subtle way but still leading to a certain level of arrogance. This is when one is literally "hung up" on their achievements and the certificates on their wall. 

Many get their kudos through power including using it for sexual conquests and manipulation.

The Yogis say that any action that has an agenda or an ego motive behind it will buy us another lifetime. The Ancestors add that ulterior motives are greatly underrated and that its better to do a good action with this motivation rather than to not do it at all. Whether this has Karmic merit though, I doubt. They do, however, stress that we need to do things for their own sake.

Jesus taught that it was better to teach a person to fish than give him a fish. Better still karmically is if that person does not even  know who gave the gift of learning to fish. Maimonides had eight levels of charity. The highest was the latter, the lowest to give unwillingly, the second highest an anonymous funding. Those in-between had mostly to do with giving so that the recipient would feel no shame in receiving. All these ways of giving have differing degrees of karmic merit or no merit. Giving a donation to get a tax break or have one's name in the news has no karmic merit. If the donation is promised for the same reason and then not given this is a negative.

The Ancestors add

The good news for many of us is that ...

Apart from attending to others our karma will also be determined by how much we attend only to ourselves as well as how highly we regard ourselves and our level of hubris. The Buddhists call this self-cherishing. 

It really isn't all about me.

The Ancestors 

and they further teach ...

Others may be attached to "stuff" which is also a result of being subject to indoctrination by those who market the "stuff."

Click to highlight and then download and play. All Karma has to do with Spiritual Purity/

-_MP3s/11_Golden_Husks.mp3

KARMA 
&

 DOING NO HARM !
to The Four Beings of Nature
The Gaia hypothesis (James Lovelock) proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic & complex self-regulating complex system that helps to maintain & perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.
All Beings deserve to be there for their own sake and not for what they can bring or do for us. The Amazon rain forest must not be just preserved because some of the plants may be able to cure cancer but because they deserve to exist & remain as part of Divine creation.
The Four Beings are:

STILL

GROWING

WILD 

(includes domestic which used to be wild)

TALKING

The Ancestors teach

When it comes to doing no harm this applies to all the Beings. In the eyes of the Creator there is no hierarchy - we are all animated by the breath of the Divine, yet each has a different vibration -

all one though not the same. We are, however, held to a greater responsibility because we have a greater consciousness. All the other Three Beings are innocent and are doing exactly what they were created to do unless they have been polluted or exploited by us. Only we deviate and are held Karmically accountable. Only we are responsible for destroying our planet.

The Ancestors

The Law of Correspondence tells us; as above so below, as within so without, as is the microcosm so is the macrocosm. We are all stardust and made of the same carbon atoms, 

...dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

To the extent we harm the other three Beings we not only affect our individual Karma but there is a global Karmic affect as we are now seeing with climate change. 

The "Butterfly Effect" states that when a butterfly flaps its wings the affect goes far and wide.

"In chaos theory, the Butterfly Effect  is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state."  Edward Lorenz

When we use pesticides and eat genetically modified foods we create "dis"-ease or disease. When we abuse antibiotics we get superbugs that defy future treatments.

Aldo Leopold writes eloquently about how we are destroying our own habitat (and we are now realizing devastating global Karmic effects.) 

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" 

If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. 

If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? 

To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” 

“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.” 

Aldo Leopold

The whites, too, shall pass - perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your own bed, and you might suffocate in your own waste.Chief Seattle

No doubt, moreover, when it comes to our own individual Karma...
Ahimsa 
do no harm to any of the Beings !

See yourself in others then whom can you hurt, what harm can you do. Dammapada

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose I am here, and you are out there. Roshi

Ubuntu (Zulu) 

I am only a person through the existence of other persons.

Click to highlight the link then play

-_MP3s/02_Sacredness.mp3