Liminality: Crossing the Threshold Both Ways
Spring is a time of liminality. First it’s warm and the sun is shining and then the weather turns chilly, raw and cloudy and moods sink back to blizzard survival mode. The Buddhists teach that everything is transient. Language is a web that creates illusions of permanence. If we name it, we believe that we know what it is and can assume that what it is now should or will remain as it is described. Maybe not.
Naming sets us up for constant confusion, disappointment and disorientation. Of course in the mundane world we have to name experiences, objects, locations and people. Otherwise, we couldn’t communicate. The question is why we hang on to the names we attach to the flow of experience so tightly that letting go is like pulling off a scab. We use names like male/female, white/black, fair/unfair, competent/incompetent, dominant/ subordinate- and they may all be accurate in the time and context they’re used but they are neither permanent nor complete. Life is much more complicated than binary categories although they do have their places and uses.
Maybe names should lead to questions. If I let go of the black/white binary, how will I know who I am in American society? How will I frame an opinion of the various racist incidents that have been occurring on our campuses? Is it possible for me to imagine myself on the other side of the binary, seeing the incidents from another point of view? What would I gain if I could do that and what would I lose? If I frame a situation as unfair, what would I lose if I realized that the situation is embedded in a much larger unfair system? Is the oppressor acting out of a personal need to dominate or is that person also enmeshed in an oppressive system that shapes perspective into domination and oppression? If s/he doesn’t dominate others what will be the systemic response? If I see it as a system, what will I lose and what will I gain? How will I be forced to reframe my understanding of the behavior and see beyond to the web of oppression? We are taught in the myth of Indra’s web that movement in one area of the web is reflected in every other area. If I know that, how do I benefit by continuing to see myself as powerless? On which side of the threshold does resentment reside? “Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die” (unattributed). Who benefits from resentment and what do we lose by letting it go?
“I was of three minds, like a tree in which there are three blackbirds” (Wallace Stevens). Trees can be seen as constantly moving energy systems, particularly in spring when the sap is rising. If there are three blackbirds in your tree, whose perspective will you choose? Can you imagine the blackbird changing branches and thus changing the world as it is seen? Can you do it? Must you name any of it? Breathe. Stop thinking. Imagine the blackbirds and what they see.###
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