Embrace the Chaos

Its Easter and Im writing this article while camping in a Yurt, pitched in a woodland, overlooking
Lake Windermere, Cumbria. Its a lovely spot for meditation and contemplation and helping me to
focus on these words that Ive been meaning to write for a while.
The woodland embodies Chaos. When you look out on the woodland, the trees havent grown in any
ordered way. They are all unique and different in shape and they have grown in a very random
fashion. The woodland floor is covered with thickets of brambles and fern, completely impenetrable
to walk through. The birds are singing. Their song is a chaotic cacophony. But it is so beautiful for all
this chaos! This is the natural world. Chaotic, without order and absolutely stunning.
However, I can also pick out patterns in the birdsong. Similar sounds from the various species come
through. The birds and their song have evolved this way so that they are able to identify mates, warn
each other of danger and possibly even help to find food that is relevant to their species.
There are tracks through the forest that humans have made. Without these, as I say, the forest
would be impenetrable. Chaos is the natural order of things but all the species occupying the
woodland, without question, and to some extent, evolve to bring some form of order into their lives.
We humans have taken this to the furthest extent. Our ability to plan, design, see risks and bring
order from all this chaos is phenomenal.

The real illustration of this is of course found in our cities. The modern human city is a complex set of
interoperating processes, functions, rules, roles and incredible electronic and mechanical devices.
Our manipulation of energy allows us to drive through the design and build of the city and all these
things are intermeshed and co-operating with hugely complex systems of interdependence. All
designed and built by humans. Nature invades the city of course. Dust and dirt, soil and creatures of
many types creep in but we push them pack out. Alternatively, in places within the city we choose to
groom nature to our design, to bring order to it and turn it into our parks and gardens.
Now, I hope Im not giving you the impression that I am criticising these achievements. There are
some who believe that everything man-made is bad. This isnt me. I love our cities. We spent a day in
Paris this spring and it was stunning to walk along the banks of The Seine in the sunshine and see the
tended fruit trees in full blossom. Our parks are gorgeous and the creativity and design that has gone
into them I find wonderful. But chaos is the natural order of things and is with us always.
To change tack a little now, mindfulness practice is a practice! In sitting we learn to open up and see
things as they are. Our relationship with chaos and nature is a key aspect of this. Living in a city,
looking closely at the world around us, we perceive the chaos. Sitting in meditation, the first place
we find chaos is in our own minds! The practice is to just notice this first. To simply perceive the
nature of our minds, exactly as they are. In my early experiences of meditation I was amazed how
chaotic my mind was (and still is). Thoughts, emotions, memories and desires all jumbled up and
tumbling over each other. Back then it frustrated me. These days, thats just the way it is. Like the
woodland.
Then there are people. Wow, how unique and different we all are. Such wide ranging opinions on
the same topics. Such different approaches to the same challenges. Step off the busy street and
enter the modern office and observe for a while. Here you can see this chaos in full flow, and of
course it is people that make it this way. I perceive that it is this chaos and our desire to bring order
that sometimes lies at the heart of many of our problems. The modern world needs order and
control. The city requires great energy from us to keep the chaos at bay and maintain order. The
place outside of that control and order is a fearful place for many of us. There are many people
these days who are thrown into anxiety when their mobile phone packs up or the shops are closed
on a bank holiday. In most of us this anxiety may be fleeting and passes quickly but for others it can
become a real problem, leading to unskilful behaviour, anger and violence and in some people
developing into deep mental health issues. Interestingly there is a great deal of evidence to suggest
that the more organised and structured a country becomes the more the general population suffers
with mental health issues. The more developed we become and the more we drive to bring order to
the chaos, the more we suffer. Very strange!
I believe that this suffering is primarily from fear and this comes from the fear of disorder and the
unknown and the desire to drive order. You can see some real hard evidence of this in our
supermarkets. A couple of years ago a fight broke out in our local supermarket just before Christmas
Eve. Literally a physical fight. There was only one of the special turkeys left and two ladies had
planned their whole Christmas meal around having that turkey on the table. Bizarre behaviour from
these two well dressed, normally well-mannered people. But it is this kind of extreme behaviour,
when the stress of a desire to have planned order in our lives, gets tested by the natural chaos that
is always sitting underneath.
The more complex we make our plans, the more the chaos will force its way through. Because that is
the natural order of things.
Then we come to people. It is here that the challenges really kick in. Because we are so beautiful and
complex we act in so many ways and respond to this complexity. Clearly our responses cant be truly
predicted, because by its nature, chaos is infinite. I could write for hours on this subject, explaining
the Buddhist view of Karma and how it drives us. If you are new to Buddhism and have the time I
would encourage you to read up on how the Buddhist view of Karma differs from the traditional
Hindu or Vedic based traditions. Its a real eye opener. But for now, lets just acknowledge that our
sheer diversity brings in chaos.
So, of course, to cope with this we do the human thing. We bring in labelling and categorisation. To
try to make order out of the infinite nature of humans we give labels. Heres a few male, female,
rich, poor, Buddhist, Christian, Catholic, Protestant, gay, lesbian, democrat, republican, ugly, thin, fat
etc. The number of categories we put people into are huge and of course growing all the time. Some
of those listed above are relatively modern. Again, it is this behaviour, this natural human behaviour
that leads to suffering. We form views of how we believe people are and should behave based on
the category weve put them in. When they dont behave exactly as the way we believe they should,
for the category we have chosen, we react with confusion, anger, fear and stress.

Again, in our modern office we see this process going on all the time. This categorisation is
formalised with role descriptions and areas of accountability for their different responsibilities. But
we are still, underneath, infinitely complex and we dont entirely fit into these formal categories.
Then these roles and categories have complex jobs to do. All designed to bring order out of the
chaos. But the chaos is still there and sometimes the grey areas in these categories and roles causes
our complex processes to break. When this happens the individuals owning the roles often get
criticized, chastised and even dismissed from their jobs.
BUT, I say again, Im not against all this. These human abilities to plan, categorise and manage leads
to amazing things. I draw again, as I have in previous articles, on the modern hospital. Saving lives
where the ultimate expression of chaos is threatening to take hold.
But still we suffer as we make our human world of process and order more and more complex and
chaos bites back even more viciously. What should we do? Simple. Become mindful.
No need to become a Buddhist. That is just another categorisation after all. But just by being mindful
and seeing things as they are we can become aware of the beauty in the chaos and relax with it.
With people, we can see them for who THEY are, not the category we put them in. This way we
become more tolerant and respectful of their views and approaches. In our modern world we can
appreciate the cleverness of human design but not fear the chaos of nature that is always there.
In this way our meditation truly becomes a practice with chaos as the teacher.
You will find no better teacher of mindfulness than the chaos in your own life. But like any learning,
in order to learn from the teacher you must listen. Here, our listening approach is to meditate and
become mindful.
So, lets sit together, follow our breath and learn to embrace the chaos?

Andy Spragg
www.re-vitalise.co.uk