Manusia dan Alam Semesta

Ketika saya kembali ke judul blog ini - Natural Wisdom - seolah ada satu hal yang masih mengganjal dalam hati, sesuatu yang secara lugas harus saya pertanyakan sendiri: Bagaimana mungkin alam semesta mempunyai kebijaksanaan? Maka saya ingin mensharingkan kerangka pikir di balik proses permenungan dari setiap entry blog ini.

"Natural Wisdom", "kebijaksanaan alam" adalah hasil dari pengolahan akal budi atas pengalaman manusiawi bersama alam sekitar.

Alam semesta (universe) adalah suatu entitas mahaluas (enormous) dan menyimpan misteri yang selalu imanen sekaligus transenden bagi sosok manusia, makhluk berakal budi. Bagaimana persepsi manusia tentang alam ini akan menentukan bagaimana manusia berinteraksi dengannya.

Tetapi saya berpikir, semenjak manusia ada di alam semesta ini, semenjak itulah alam semesta bersifat human! Tentu saja itu sejauh alam semesta ini berada dalam jangkauan akal budi manusia.

Atas dasar pemikiran inilah, manusia mampu menangkap dan menterjemahkan nilai-nilai kehidupan yang dia jumpai (encountering) dalam kesehariannya bersama alam. Dari situlah istilah "kebijaksanaan" muncul dan berkembang. Bahkan kemudian "kebijaksanaan" yang dimengerti oleh manusia itu dalam perkembangannya membimbing manusia kepada sosok pribadi, personifikasi dari "kebijaksanaan tertinggi" - "the ultimate wisdom" yang merangkum (bahkan mengatasi) semua kebijaksanaan yang dikenal akal budi manusia.

Paradigma tentang alam semesta bergeser. Semesta yang semula dimengerti secara terpisah (bahkan infrahuman semata) menjadi semesta yang menginklusikan keberadaan manusia di dalamnya. De facto manusia adalah bagian dari semesta bersama makhluk-makhluk lain. Dalam arti tertentu ada "kesejajaran" antara manusia dengan makhluk-makhluk lain itu. Secara logis kesejajaran ini memungkinkan manusia "berdialog" dengan mereka. Dengan cara itu pula manusia berakal budi ini semakin mengenali dirinya di hadapan dan dalam rengkuhan semesta yang mempribadi.

Dalam paradigma inilah kita mengerti bahwa semesta "memancarkan" kebijaksanaannya yang dalam blog ini diterjemahkan dalam istilah "Natural Wisdom". Manusia bisa bercermin dari pancaran "kebijaksanaan" itu. ***

My little shoots, looking for the light!

Solution is already potentially within our being!

Well… I think everybody knows that sunlight is very vital for every living thing even every being on this planet earth. Who can imagine there is no sunlight? Darkness! Moonlight might be the second hero. Ok! But the moon has its light from the sun, and it only reflects the sunlight. The sun is still the super hero!

What I will share here now is not the scientific knowledge about the sun or the moon. But I’m talking about the light which is very essential for our living. When we are in darkness, we need light! We long for the light! No light, no living! The rest is a question: Is light the solution while the sun is still shining upon the earth?

I’ve got a lesson from my little shoots.

I like gardening. It sounds funny as I am living in a paying house with no landscape or space to grow plants like in a common garden. So I’m going with my little pots. The plants I attend are just popular ones. Some are so easy to grow, one of them is philodendron.

Several days ago I slipped of sticks of philodendron into my pots, two sticks in every pot. Each one of them had just two internodes with one leaf left. No real root they had except nodules at their internodes. Done! I gave them water, and place them on the floor in my veranda. Days went by, until I found something happening. There were small shoots breaking out of their leaves’ armpit! Of course they were still small leaves.

Now, they look like the picture shown above. You see, they are going to crawl, as if they’d want to reach something to hold on. And the growing is about to a certain direction. Yes! They are going to the direction of the sunlight! (I toke the picture in the morning at about 09.00 AM). Do you see anything special on my little philodendron? What about this one: the closer to the sunlight has grown longer than others! There are more leaves at that part. Why?

You can give me a scientific explanation on this phenomen. In simple words I would say that my philodendron needs the light for its growing. It has photo-sensory cells to detect the lights. As the cells get the light intensively they are stimulated to multiply themselves faster than others. As an individu the philodendron mobilizes supporting elements of its growing in great quantities to them shaping new branches and leaves. The results of the photosynthesis done by the cells will be spread to all parts of the plant. The cells grow extensively as they multiply themselves faster, while the others grow more intensively, they become thicker and stronger.

That’s a common and natural fact.

By the nature, plants need light “to grow well”. By the nature, the plants have all elements and potentiality “to grow”. I say so with quotation-marks on the two phrases “to grow” and “to grow well”. It means, when the plants get no enough light, they are still capable to grow, even with no light at all they still grow though it’s going hardly to mention easy to die. They will grow pale, and will be burnt as soon as you place them under the sunlight immediately. What I would like to say is that the light is just a catalystic factor more than a basic element of the plants.

When my philodendron is growing extensively to the direction of the sunlight, it seems like a process of looking for a solution! The sunlight is supposed to be the solution. In fact, it’s just a process of cells consentration. And it’s just a bio-chemical process as plants have no neural structure – like those of animals – to enable a kind of decission making. But, as I have to get the lesson from this process, I would like to say: to concentrate the supporting elements in great quantities to the lightened shoots is the exact and actual decission – and so the solution – my philodendron can make to grow better than before! My philodendron makes the potentiality actual as soon as the sunlight shines intensively upon it!

Human being is higher than vegetative beings. We have emotions, intelligence, and – don’t forget – spiritual-religious view. Even we have all dimensions of all beings including physical and vegetative ones. So, the experience with my philodendron looking for the sunlight above might give us insights to take. Some would be as follow:

• Inherently plants have sensitive photo-sensoric cells to detect the light source direction. (We have intelligence and capabilities to know better about our basic needs to be real human! Recognize your own talents!)
• Light is just a stimulus as well as catalyst factor for the proses of growing, not the basic element. Even in the darkness plants are still capable to grow! Sunlight is the best one among the others that will stimulate and catalize the process. (What is the most dream of your life? What is the goal of your life? Remember, it’s not the solution but the best direction you can go!)
• When they get the sunlight, the plants concentrate the supporting elements in greater quantities to the intensively-lightened-cells shaping shoots and leaves extensively. That’s a kind of exact decission, movement-for-solution, and actualization of potentiality which has existed in every vegetative being by the nature. (When you get the direction, and so believe in it, then go for it with all of your talents and energy! You have them already! Make them actual, and fulfil them in your move now! That’s the solution!)

I would like to recite a brief song from the “Sister Act II” soundtrack movie to end this post:

“If you wanna be somebody,
if you wanna go somewhere,
you better wake up and pay attention!”

Thank you, and God bless you all! *** (",)

What a stink!

A Paradoxical Consideration of Bad Experiences

I was working in my garden when I got in need for some fertilizer to make my plants grow well. I like using organic fertilizers, e.g.: compost and dungs. I had none of it now. I went to my friend’s house where I knew there was much of dung of his goats. When I got there, I found the stable cleaned. He had threw the dung away to a certain place in his garden. I looked for it, and found it swarmed over by some flies. What a stink! I had to inhale such a smell hardly unless I got nothing. Of course I didn’t take the wet and fresh putrifying dung. It’s too hot for my plants, and capable enough to make them withered in hours. I had to set it aside to get the completely decayed dung. It looked like humus. Then I had a plastic bag of it. Done! I got away from that damned stinky place to inhale fresh air soon. Easy relieves…! And I went home to have my plants manured.

I know, and so do people, that waste things always generate smells. They make air polution by it. No one like them! I’m sure you know which one has the stinkiest smell! I’ll tell you as far as I can memorize the smells:

Human feces seems to be the number one! Agree? (LOL!)
Number two goes to animal dungs! (chickens, goats, cows, etc.)
Number three goes to decomposing rubbish..

Ironically, as far as I know, the most stinkiest waste things is the best manure for plants! Probably it’s because of the rich minerals in it. Manure from human feces is the most expensive to buy, prove it! (Lol!) And one more thing you’d agree is that organic fertilizer is better than chemical one. We have to thank to bacterias that do such a great function to decompose the waste things and change them to be useful nutrient for plants. The organic fertilizers make soil pretty good for anyplant, while chemicals make it tough.

Insights:

I found something disturbing in my mind. It’s a paradox! Life’s cycle seems need this paradox to keep running:

• What if there is no bacterias on this earth? What if there is no worms and maggots? Who would be the hero?
• What if there is no decomposition process?
• What if there is no transformations?
• What kind of living is imagined to be?

Life is passing by with many kind of residual experiences. Some of them are painful to memorize. If we do not “decompose” them, they can be poisons instead of fertilizers for our going life. The can be corrupting fiercely. Like the dungs have to be in a proper place to decompose, so would be that of dark sides of our experiences. If stinky smell’s generated temporarily, let it happen. Everything needs time to go. But let it be something meaningful. That would be a sign of transformation. Be with paradoxical thinking upon them to experience the spot of decomposition! It would be the spot of salvation where all blessings are! Dungs are blessings for plants, so be it the dark sides of our life for us! Such a thinking would bear reversions by which we will consider our life in a new way.

Such a thinking has borne millions of odes, poetries, lyrics, songs, verses and wisdoms. They are powerful words we human can get towards a true life. They build any of our convictions, and above all our faith to God the Merciful One!

“Verily, verily, I say unto you: Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” – Joh 12,24 ***