In reflection, I am grateful for the epistemological shift facilitated by the contemplative practices this quarter. Because of the emotional and intellectual breadth and depth of our course materials, I’ve had greater access by way of building connection to the material than through my attempts to “grasp” it. To this end, the contemplative practice has been very helpful. I doubt very much that I’ll ever really know Death, or (beyond a comically reduced synopsis), understand the convergent processes which together constitute the Anthropocene. Instead, my best work and healthiest responses come about through exploration of my relationship to these concepts.

As we watched Journey of the Universe in class, I was struck by the implication that human “insight” is causally linked to (and therefore inextricable from) the physical and biological processes of the universe. Rather than something generated or contained within me, awareness may simply arise there. Consciousness, by this model, is an emergent property of a system. While conceptually I can muster a dim understanding of this, I can more wholly come into a felt experience of it. I’ve been primed to accept this sense through awareness of breath – like the breath, a thought or a feeling can arise, interact with my body, and return, changed, to the broader system. Instead of repository, I can frame myself as a conduit for information.

I consider this in relation to philosopher Timothy Norton’s definition of hyperobjects – explained in this blurb as “entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place”. He offers climate change as the ultimate example; I would argue that “death” or “Anthropocene” also qualify. As “things” in themselves, these concepts are too massive for me to contain intellectually, and the concept of managing them is absurd. I can, instead, cultivate a relationship with the hyperobject. How does awareness of it arise in me? What does it do when it lands? And how can that awareness return, changed, to the broader system? Because it facilitates this relational engagement, I see contemplative practice as a path out of overwhelm and isolation in the face of the planetary hyperobjects with which we engage in this course.

The aquarium in my home is a system whose parts I do not fully understand, but instead define relationally.