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The other day, one of the big oaks in our forest broke in half during a windstorm. The top part crashed down, crushing a number of other trees beneath it.

The day after it fell, Rebecca and I sat on the fallen section, looking up at the old oak. Since we’re rather fond of trees, and particularly fond of the trees in our forest, we found ourselves considering how odd it was that we weren’t angry with the old oak for crushing all those other trees beneath it.

To illustrate, consider that a storm comes by your house and blows a branch into a window, breaking it. Of course, this is a perfectly natural occurrence. We might be angry, but we’re not angry at the tree or at the windstorm. In fact, if the anger is directed anywhere, we might direct it at ourselves since we didn’t notice how close that branch was to our window, and trim it off before it had a chance to do some damage.

Now, if the neighbor boy comes running through the yard and throws a rock into our window, we will feel quite different, won’t we? Now our anger is directed at the boy, and we’ll probably find some way to punish him.

This all seems very normal to us. We can’t really get angry at rocks and trees and even at most animals, because they are not acting with free will. But we often get angry with human beings (including ourselves), because we do act via free will.

A while ago, I wrote a post calling free will into question. If we look honestly, we discover that we don’t really have any conclusive evidence that free will exists (and conversely, no conclusive evidence that it doesn’t).

It is interesting if we sit down and really spend some time thinking about this issue of free will. If you watch your mind carefully, you will see that we have a very ingrained belief that free will exists. And if you continue to think on the issue, taking the time to examine it fully, you very well may discover that you want to jump to the opposite conclusion.

In other words, if we observe with our full intelligence, we will discover that we really don’t know whether there is free will or not.

It’s a bit odd, then, that we spend so much energy applying ourselves to being angry with ourselves or others because of this belief in free will.

After all, how else can you be angry with someone unless they’ve done something under the context of free will?

Is there free will or isn’t there? Make a decision either way, and you’ve simply latched on to one half of your usual dualistic model of the world. In truth, neither ‘free will’ nor ‘no free will’ adequately describes the true relationship we have with the world.

Most of us are strongly in the ‘free will’ camp. And we may never take the time in our lives to sit down and really think about the implications this has in our lives. But this belief is one of the strongest influences in how our life unfolds.

If we observe carefully, we will discover that we can make strong arguments for either side of the issue. And we will also see the many flaws each side has. What, then, are we left with?

Observe. When you truly examine this belief (or any belief), it will crumble before your observation. You can only hold a belief if you close your eyes and cover your ears, refusing to think or examine. But when the belief is unmasked . . .

This is when the world begins to open up to us in a new way. When we’re not painting the world with our beliefs, we’re able to see the world just as it is, and it will dazzle us in its beauty and simplicity.

Perhaps the greatest mystery is not whether or not there is free will. Perhaps the greatest mystery is this – Why do we spend so much energy and time constructing a world-view that brings us so much stress, frustration, and pain? The world is just fine as it is. But when we insist on painting it with beliefs, we miss out on almost everything life has to offer, and are left only with the constant stream of thoughts in our heads – punctuated by an occasional glimpse of beauty when the world presents us with something so new or amazing that our thoughts, for a moment, cease.

Let the world be its wondrous self. When you do, you discover something truly extraordinary – that you, too, are wondrous and beautiful and simple.

This is all that we need to do. Everything else will unfold perfectly on its own.

The other day, I heard someone utter a remarkable statement.

“I’ve seen it all.”

This person had spent fifty or so years on planet Earth, and was attempting to convey that at some point, we all come to a place in our lives where we realize that we’ve met every type of person we’re going to meet, that we’ve seen all the ups and downs life can throw our way, and that we’ve pretty much experienced all that life has to offer.

This might seem like a radical and rather negative assumption, but to some extent, most of us agree with it. We feel that once we’ve been in a relationship for a few months or a year, the ‘crush’ has to go away. We feel that the view out our front window is the same every day, and therefore not worthy of our attention. We feel that there are no new ideas in the world. We get tired of the body we’re in, of the same old emotional patterns we suffer through, and of our incessantly worrying mind, which can never seem to settle down and just relax.

But the magical thing about the world is that it is never the same from one moment to the next. If we grow complacent in life, it is clearly a disease of our own minds, and not indicative of the world we live in.

Consider, for a moment, the clouds.

When you see clouds in the sky, each one has a totally unique shape. No cloud has ever looked just like the one you are seeing, and no cloud will ever look just like it again. Ever.

The scene outside your window changes every day, too. So does your body, your emotions, and your thoughts. And when it comes to other people, they are constantly in a state of flux. How can we grow bored with someone if they are a new person in every single moment of life?

This magical and constant change is a reality – it’s not something we have to believe in or brainwash ourselves into accepting. When we let our bare awareness observe, this is the wondrous world we find ourselves living within.

It’s our usual, accepted view that is more akin to brainwashing. In order to perceive the world as boring, we have to accept a doctrine for which there is absolutely no proof (indeed, no evidence) – a doctrine that states that people never change, that the world plods along in endless cycles.

If you are in a long-term relationship, this is the perfect place to observe how aware your mind is of change. Do you find your companion to be predictable, boring, or irritating? Observe your mind when you think these things. If you do, you’ll discover that it is your mind that is dull, and not the other person. No person (including you!) can help but be a miraculously changing, ever-shifting phenomenon. The world is also in a constant process of blossoming, dying, and evolving. So are you.

What happens if we allow ourselves to see how the world really is?

This is what life is all about. There is nothing else we need to do.

Of late, I’ve been spending a lot of time wandering the forests that surround Sweetwater Vale. In my wanders, I’ve been meeting a lot of the creatures who make their homes in the forests. There’s the big buck with the wicked antlers, the red-colored turkey, the squirrel who’s missing half his tail, and the barred owl who makes his home in our pine forest.

These creatures give to Rebecca and I in many ways. We enjoy watching them play, eat, and fly. Rebecca captures many of them with her photography. We observe them as they move from season to season. But a week ago, I met one of the more elusive of the forest’s denizens.

I met a very special coyote.

For those of you not familiar with the wildlife of the United States, coyotes are medium-sized canines. Though they can adapt to urban environments, they are most populous in wilder areas, and they are very wary of humans. Rebecca and I often hear their haunting cries late at night, echoing out of the still and darkened woods. But during our six years at Sweetwater, we’ve never once laid eyes on one of them.

As you might imagine, I felt pretty lucky when I saw the coyote on this particular hike. He was about four hundred meters distant, lying in the middle of a huge field and basking in the sun. From my hiding-place in the trees, I watched him roll about in the short spring grass. He’d nap for a half-hour or so, and then roll about again, re-adjust, and go back to sleep. After a time, I thought I’d try to get a little closer, so I started moving quietly from tree to tree.

To my amazement, I made it all the way to the edge of the field without him seeing me. Delighted with my luck, I got down on my belly and started to cross the field, inching along as I tried to close the last hundred meters. There was a slight rise in the terrain between him and me, and since the wind was blowing favorably (and thus he wasn’t alerted to my scent), I managed to get about twenty feet away before he saw me.

I was ecstatic. I had never been so close to one of these wild predators, and as his eyes looked into mine, I was transfixed by his beauty.

Then he got up, and my heart skipped a beat.

This coyote was paralyzed. Both his back legs were draped uselessly behind him, and as he began to run, he had to pull himself along with his forelegs.

Rebecca and I have more ‘injured animal’ stories than we can recount. Animals in need (and humans, as well), often cross our path, and we always do our best to help out. As I watched the coyote flee, I did what came instinctively – I gave chase, intending to see if there was any way I could help.

Even with only two legs, the coyote was fast. I sprinted to head him off, and he darted about a little, seeing if he could find an escape. When it was clear that I wasn’t going to give up, he simply lay down in some leaves.

It was a surreal moment. I sat down on a rock a few feet away, and we regarded each other for a long while.

I tried to ascertain the nature of his wounds, but he was clearly uncomfortable with me getting any closer, and I couldn’t tell what had happened. Despite his paralyzed state, his eyes were sharp and clear, and he was not skinny – indeed, he looked well-fed.

It was one of the rare instances that I had a camera along, so I took a picture.

It’s tough to know what to do in situations like this. A part of us can feel that if some creature is injured this badly, the best thing we can do is to kill them. It reminded me of a scene from Peter Matthiessen’s book The Snow Leopard, in which he sees a young girl in Nepal who is paralyzed from the waist down. She, like the coyote, moved using only her arms, and since she lived in a remote hill village, she would probably never experience the benefit of a wheelchair or other modern medical aid. Peter reported wanting to ‘give her something – a new life?’, but further noted that she ‘gazes up, clear eyed, without resentment . . .’

We have an idea that life can always be better. And that idea creates a scale with which we tend to judge both ourselves and the people around us. Living by this philosophy, we feel pity for the poor and envy towards the rich. But in truth, we know nothing about the suffering of others. We are too immersed in our own judgments. Was Peter’s little girl suffering? Was the coyote suffering? Is the poor person suffering? What about the rich?

With our judgments in place, we dole out our compassion and we dole out our contempt, all the while digging ourselves deeper into a trench of judgment. This is not to say that we shouldn’t reach out and help those whom we judge to be in need. But let us not pretend that we are making their lives better in the process. We may be setting into motion great happiness, or great misery.

When we give without assumptions, something special happens. We discover that we’re not giving in order to appease our own judgments, but that we are giving simply to GIVE. This is true compassion, and giving in this way is always a joyful thing. Nothing taints the purity of our giving.

This is most important when it comes to our relationship with ourselves. In our constant striving to make our lives better, we rarely stop to appreciate where we are. This simple skill is lost to us, and in this way we guarantee that no matter what we achieve, we will always be filled with desire for more.

It is fine to strive for more, but if we do it believing that our life will be better once we get what we want, then we’ll be trapping ourselves in an endless cycle. Let us see clearly enough to recognize that our joy is right here, right now, no matter what our circumstances. We may have just gotten a wonderful new job, just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, or be sitting down to a bowl of oatmeal in the morning. In each of these moments we are free to experience life, or to push life aside in a constant effort to make things better.

As for the coyote, I tossed him the dried meat I had brought along for my hike (which he eyed suspiciously), and then quietly got up and left. A few days later I went back to the same place, and he was gone. Perhaps he was slowly dying in a hollow log, or had already been killed by dogs, humans, or another predator. But he might just as well have been lounging in a sunny field, rolling over so that the sun could warm his belly. I don’t expect that I’ll meet him again, but in the few moments we had together, I was in the presence of a great and beautiful teacher.