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The Spirit of the Eagle
Our Connectedness To All Things
This essay is dedicated to the Balinese Eagle I had the distinct privilege to meet when I was in Bali in 1996. Stripped of all of its flight feathers by its human captors, the eagle sits around all day for the sole purpose of amusing tourists, imprisoned on a small island that has become a tourist trap along the coast of Bali in the Indonesian Archipelago. Unphased by humans and tethered to its perch, the eagle displayed a strange sympathetic empathy I would have never associated with a bird of prey. When it sat upon any part of your arm or head, it would use the base of its feet to stand, not its talons to grab which would be its natural instinct, and when it lost its balance it would shuffle its feet quickly and shift its body weight instead of using its talons. As a result, a leather glove or other protection was not required to allow it to stand upon your arms, hands, shoulders, or head. To see such calmness, dignity, and patience in its demeanor despite the cruelty that had scarred its imprisonment was a testament to the spirit within all living creatures.
So often because we forget that in this world we are not the only creatures or beings that matter, we think we have a right to harm or ignore those we believe are not as capable or intelligent as us. We are all made from the same astronomic materials that formed this world, born from the same elements, compounds, and complex molecules that make up our genetic code. Despite the beliefs of many, spawned possibly from the Biblical accounts of Genesis encouraging them to believe Man was superior to all creatures, the human is in reality but one genus and species among many in Nature, but one given the ability to shape the future by the fruits of its opposable thumbs and enlarged cerebral cortex. Though most humans may never realize it, we as a species cannot exist without the rest of Nature. We require Nature for food and clothing, consuming fruits, vegetables, grains, and meats to keep the biological machine that is the human body functioning. We require sun and water from Nature to grow the crops that feed our nations, the grains that feed the animals that help us manage and fertilize the land, the insects that pollenate the flowers so that we will have fruits and vegetables to eat and the raw materials for clothing and tools.
Nature, on the other hand, has no such requirements for or reliance upon us. In almost every way, Humans are a part of the machine who have grown to believe that they are the whole of the machine. They believe, in their own blindness living in their artificial caves of steel and processed wood, that they are untouchable, that they do not need Nature, this thing of passing notice they see on PBS or in documentaries on TV. They go to the store, seeing only the sanitized pre-prepared packages of food, not realizing from where the contents came, or which creatures were sacrificed so that they may enjoy a simple pleasure of the palat. They live in an illusion, believing they are separated from Nature, in a place where food magically appears for purchase, nice and neatly packaged in clear cellophane.
We are a part of Nature, not separate from it. And when we ignore nature it isn't some nebulous quantity like "the Earth" or "Nature" we are causing harm. It is ourselves we are slowly destroying. The sooner we realize this truth and begin to clean up after ourselves, caring for all life around us as its guardians, the better off we will be as a species for our own future, and our children's future.
-Albert Wang
November 1, 1996
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An image of the Balinese eagle appears in the right panel of this old homepage image I did in 1997.
