David Hinton
Elemental Mind
It was instantaneous and complete, just like the ancient sage-masters said. I was walking with my dog, Sophie, on a trail near my home. A routine walk. Raspberries were ripe, a sprawling thicket of them spilling over into the trail. I was preoccupied, lost in thought, not paying attention. Sophie, usually roaming out ahead, had sensed danger and was right at my feet. I didn’t notice. Suddenly, very near on my left but hidden behind a screen of brush and berry bushes, I heard an animal startle away, clumsy and galumphing. Then a moment later, another. I assumed deer, as they’re so common in these woods. Sophie barked once or twice, and I reached for her collar, telling her to Stay! Just then, I realized there was something large and dark just behind me and to the right: in open woods and easily seen if I hadn’t been so self-absorbed. I looked over my shoulder and saw a black bear about twenty feet away, coming toward me. That’s when I realized what I’d done. I’d walked into a very narrow space between this mama bear and her two cubs. They were too absorbed in the pleasures of luscious raspberries to notice me; I was too absorbed in ideas for this book to notice them. And now, I was exactly where I did not want to be!
Black bears are timid. They will avoid confrontation. Except when a mama bear is protecting her cubs. Even then (the thought flashed through my mind) she doesn’t want to attack me. She just wants me away from her cubs. And that’s what I want, with wild urgency. Normally, running from a black bear is a bad idea. But not in this situation. So I push Sophie out ahead of me, saying Go! Go!, then start running and, because noise can dissuade black bears, I yell I’m going! I’m going! Mama bear bounds out onto the trail and starts after me. In the panic, my mind is instantaneously and completely empty and tranquil, awareness absolutely lit up and open and attentive to the situation unfolding around me. That self I was only moments ago in my preoccupation, that me: it’s utterly vanished. There’s no separation between a me and the world around me: I’m wholly entangled in it. And I’m moving with crystalline spontaneity: no thought, no judgement, no planning, no explanation. I say “I” in telling the story, that grammatical necessity, but there was no “I” there.
Sophie is named after Henry David Thoreau’s sister. Henry might have paused to record the event in his journal, but luckily Sophie was wiser. She doesn’t hesitate. So I’m running, and she’s out ahead of me running. Mama bear’s closing the distance behind me, and I’m running through tangles of raspberry canes. I hear the cubs scrabbling up trees off to my left and a little behind. Then, after a few more steps, my legs catch in the raspberries and I fall flat out on the ground.
More panic, expecting mama bear on top of me any moment, mind more wide-open, movements more spontaneous, more selfless. I right myself and scramble to my feet, looking back to see where mama bear is. She’s just then coming to a stop about ten feet away. I see the fur covering her shoulder muscles shudder, and I’m back up, running again. After another twenty-five feet, I look over my shoulder and see her, mama bear, ambling off toward her cubs.