The Sting
John Dawn II
Professor Hesse
ENGL 101
21 October 2013
The Sting The mind produces thoughts constantly, even when you do not look at them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it “consciousness.” This is your waking state – your consciousness shifts from sensation, from perception to perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes “awareness,” the direct insight into the whole of the consciousness, the entirety of the mind. The mind is like a river, flowing constantly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it: “my thought.” Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, endless, uncaused, and without change. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is incomplete and changeful; awareness is total, changeless, calm, silent, and it is the common template of every experience. In each, “Where Have All the Animals Gone? The Lamentable Extinction of Zoos” written by Charles Siebert and “The Extinction of Experience” written by Robert Michael Pyle, both men make us think beyond our consciousness and deepening our awareness of the importance of experiencing nature through direct contact. The similarity between Charles Siebert and Robert Michael Pyle’s pieces lies within the concept of direct contact with nature. In Charles Siebert’s piece he implies that the only way to truly understand nature is through direct contact. Charles states in the text, “The fact is, for us the “wild” has only ever been an idea…The only meeting place the civilized world has negotiated between the absence and presence of the wild is the zoo” (Siebert 24). Siebert uses zoos as the prime focus in his piece saying that a zoo is a place we go to experience the “wild,” but the animals are not actually in the
Professor Hesse
ENGL 101
21 October 2013
The Sting The mind produces thoughts constantly, even when you do not look at them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it “consciousness.” This is your waking state – your consciousness shifts from sensation, from perception to perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes “awareness,” the direct insight into the whole of the consciousness, the entirety of the mind. The mind is like a river, flowing constantly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it: “my thought.” Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, endless, uncaused, and without change. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is incomplete and changeful; awareness is total, changeless, calm, silent, and it is the common template of every experience. In each, “Where Have All the Animals Gone? The Lamentable Extinction of Zoos” written by Charles Siebert and “The Extinction of Experience” written by Robert Michael Pyle, both men make us think beyond our consciousness and deepening our awareness of the importance of experiencing nature through direct contact. The similarity between Charles Siebert and Robert Michael Pyle’s pieces lies within the concept of direct contact with nature. In Charles Siebert’s piece he implies that the only way to truly understand nature is through direct contact. Charles states in the text, “The fact is, for us the “wild” has only ever been an idea…The only meeting place the civilized world has negotiated between the absence and presence of the wild is the zoo” (Siebert 24). Siebert uses zoos as the prime focus in his piece saying that a zoo is a place we go to experience the “wild,” but the animals are not actually in the