[4.5 mins reading time]

Mu Nou Ei

Sometimes not knowing is good.

You could be just, well, content to let a small thing open up to the vast mystery.

In other times, this can be a frustration.

What will happen next? Why is so hard to shed this long bag dragged behind me?

We know so much about human affairs, yet seemingly so little about the big stuff. How to approach the planet-spanning crises of nature loss, climate collapse, widening inequality?

This is where tricksters can help. Every culture has their lead characters. Coyote, Raven, Spider, Green Willow, Fox, Green Turtle. And Hare.

The Great Hare, the transformer at the edge of things. Hare springs up, comes out of fire faster than a phoenix, lives under the silver moon. Where do they go, people ask? Those graceful leapers? So many in the fields, and then nothing.

Well, where do you think?

Their young are born with their clothes on, eyes wide, ready to run. Born in the chime hours, so bound to have second sight. Even as adults, they only eat at night. Go to the middle of a field, and you may find them sitting in a circle, the hares’ parliament.

The Great Hare was the goddess Eostre’s favourite animal and spirit, yet still can’t cast off the rabbit associations. The Tinners’ Rabbits, three sharing three ears, the rabbit in the Chinese moon, Br’er Rabbit, Jack Rabbit. All golden hares, with black-tipped ears.

In East Anglia, the Hare is the trickster with eighty names. The Hare is Owd Sally, Owd Sarah,  the one haring-away, the hare-brained and the leaper, the one who springs to a truth, the frisky one, the lurker in the ditch, the skulker and the springer. The hare’s mind is creative and active. The hare is the looker to the side, the one who doesn’t go home straight.

This is how the Great Hare called Glooskap learned to have a smooth mind, how they taught others to live in light and dark, how to be creator and destroyer. Hares today can cross to the land of the dead and talk to all those shades and shadows.

Now it came to pass, when Glooskap had defeated each giant and sorcerer, every magician and all manner of evil spirits, and he thought his work was done, a certain woman said, not so fast Mister, for there remains One who will remain unconquered for all time.

“And who is this One?”, inquired the Hare.

“It is the mighty Wasis, and there she sits.”

Now Wasis was the Baby, and she sat on the floor sucking a piece of maple sugar, greatly contented, troubling no one. As the Lord of the Beasts had never had a child, he knew nothing of managing children. He turned to baby with a bewitching smile, and told her to come to him, his voice sweet like the summer bird.

Baby smiled, and did not budge.

Glooskap spoke terribly, and Baby burst out crying, but did not move for all that.

He used his most awful spells, and sang songs which raise the dead and scared devils. And still she sat and looked on admiringly and seemed to find it interesting, but all the same never moved an inch.

Glooskap gave up, and Wasis on the floor in the sunshine went goo, goo! And cooed again.

And to this day, you can see all babes are well-contented and going goo, goo! For of all the beings that have ever been since the beginning, Baby is alone the only invincible one.

Said Morikei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido:

“Always keep your mind as bright and clear,

As the vast sky, the great ocean,

              And the highest peak, empty of all thoughts.”

 Commentary on Mu Nou Ei

In the legendary 1930 classic, Zen and Japanese Culture, Daisetz Suzuki said, go back to your infancy, and observe. The great earth may crack, and the child remains unconcerned. A burglar may break into the home, and she smiles at him. “Would a baby be overjoyed if the empire was given to her, or she was decorated with a medal,” asked Suzuki. What concerns the child is the absolute present.

The infant as yet knows no fear, no insecurity, does not need to be something nor live up to some expectation. There is anxiety about food and comfort, but not much more. Quite soon, though, this begins to change.

Christina Feldman and Willem Kuyken asked in their book, Mindfulness, what does it mean to be happy and to live the good life? They observed that mental ill-health was now a one-billion-person worldwide problem, and that through a combination of ancient wisdom and modern science we might just, quite literally, “Come to our senses.”

The Great Hare with honey-coloured eyes, jewels gleaming, the trickster often with bees flying round their fur. The one who makes things slide sideways, quite fast.

An old god. An animal with the strongest of voices.

Hare says: “I prefer coles and worts, any kind of brassica and cabbage. Do you have some? It’s always good to bring a gift.”