The meanest boy Brackenbury
ever took into the wilderness was a Neo-Nazi who had beaten a black boy
nearly to death with a shotgun. For several days he tried catching a
marmot, and finally caught it under a rock and speared it. He drug out the
marmot and held it on his lap as it looked into his eyes. Brackenbury said,
"I’ve never forgotten the look on that boy’s face as he looked
into the marmot’s eyes…It looked up at him and there was kind of this
light of understanding or of mutual empathy, then the light kind of went
out of the eyes of the marmot and it died. And that boy started crying,
just broke down and wept, and the reason he was able to feel that was that
he watched that marmot for several days….he had some empathy for it…"
The boy cried hard for several days, as though an abscess had opened up and
drained all his hate and anger, and then was a very different boy. When he
was 18 the young man returned to become a counselor in the program,
according to Brackenbury, directly from this one experience, which
illustrates the profound influence of the hunt on opening the heart and
engendering a commitment to serve others.
Hunting teaches us that, like all lifeforms, we are dependent upon the
integrity and viability of nature.
Though the hunt is goal-oriented, it teaches us that all of creation
functions by processes and that we are part of the process. It engenders a
"7th generation perspective," making decisions today
with future generations in mind. As Athabascan elder, Peter John, said,
"The animals you take are important to your grandchildren."
Because hunters are motivated to "fiercely protect nature," as
poet Robert Bly said, they are the leaders in environmental conservation.
Hunting teaches us to be observant and patient, to emulate nature and
slow down, to "be here now" in the present moment. It teaches us
that inner peace and sanity are possible in an insane world. According to
Don Jacobs, a leading thinker in education, "Hunting is the ideal way
to teach young people universal virtues including patience, generosity,
courage, fortitude and humility."
The hunt promotes genuine self-confidence, tempered by humility and
gratitude, as well as self-sufficiency. It teaches us self-restraint in the
use of lethal weapons.
The hunt naturally promotes ethics universally associated with
aboriginal and recreational hunting. The First Precept of Buddhism is known
as "ahisma," which actually means "to avoid causing
unnecessary harm," which to hunters means taking only what they need
and using what they take. It also means minimizing the suffering of
animals. The first vow of Zen Buddhism is to save all life, the equivalent
among hunters of "putting back," stewardship of the environment.
The hunt submerges us in the subtle realities of life. These include the
power of prayer, envisioning what we want, tempered by ethical choice.
Every hunt is a prayer in motion, and seasoned hunters know that faith in
the outcome has much to do with success. Hunting teaches us the
significance of attitude, intention and right-mindedness.
These are some of the secrets hidden deep in hunting, the original rite
of passage for which there is no substitute and the only path of initiation
that marries men to the ‘other’ that is nature. Those who directly
participate in the food chain enter into the Great Mystery of life as life and
death. For them the sacred hunt is a love chain.
More than at any time in the history of the world we need men who are
deeply wedded to nature, which is to say that we need men who value the
viability of the entire biological community above consumerism and the
unsustainable economy that feeds it. Hunters are such men. Their
unparalleled performance on the front lines of conservation makes them the
ideal model for a world in crisis.
