“Always was, always will be?”

I was at an event in Sydney recently where there were three Acknowledgments of Country. Three! Each one slightly more dry and mechanical than the previous.

I looked around the room and half the audience were eye-rolling, the other half nodding approvingly: another step towards reconciliation, redemption.

DADIRRI: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH.
For the last few years at our retreats, in lieu of an Acknowledgement of Country, I read part of a passage by Aboriginal Australian artist, activist and educator Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann about Dadirri (you can read the full passage here).

Dadirri is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness.

Dadirri is what we do in retreats. We set our hearts and minds to one task: to still the mind to connect to ourselves - and by extension, to the earth, the sky, the stars. To the great silence at the heart of all beings.

To that which Indigenous cultures and contemplatives from all traditions throughout the ages have sought and revered.

To that which western discourse is starting to acknowledge is not something that exists outside of ourselves.

TICKING BOXES.
I’ve spent time working in classrooms with Indigenous kids. When the bits of the curriculum come up that attempt to incorporate their cultural roots, they cringe; the rest of the class (including the teachers) yawn.

I’ve chatted to Leonard, our local Aboriginal leader in Mission Beach. He embodies dadirri. And he hasn’t found any kids to pass on his deep wisdom to. They’re not interested. Too busy on smartphones, trying not to be associated with the curriculum add-ons that depict a distant culture that seems to belong in a museum.

DEEP LISTENING IN ACTION.
Miriam Rose provides us with a clear, direct request: “we are asking our fellow Australians to take time to know us; to be still and to listen to us”.

She also provides us with a clear, direct path: Dadirri.

The “knowing” she speaks of can’t be learned through books, or demonstrated through public declarations.

To know the depths of Indigenous cultures we must first connect with the depths within ourselves, through silent contemplation. This is a deeply private endeavour.

Only then might we begin to understand from where the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander spiritual insights and cultural traditions have emerged.

Only then might we begin to see we have so much to gain from Indigenous wisdom.

We exist within a cultural framework that has lost anything meaningful around which to situate itself. We are starved of depth, splashing about just beneath the surface, occasionally gasping for air.

I’ve shared before that chilling quote that by John Wren Lewis; that we are living as a “collective nightmare of separate individuals in an alien universe struggling for survival, satisfaction, and significance.”

Dr Paul Pearsall, who was a renowned American neuropsychologist, drew clear clinical links between heart disease and ones capacity for empathy, compassion and equanimity.

Based on his research, he designed a test called The Heart Energy Amplitude Recognition Test, which is essential a test to determine the openness of ones’ heart. (You can download the test here).

When westerners attempted the test, they accused Dr Pearsall of deliberately setting them up to fail. However, when he gave the test to the Indigenous Polynesians of Hawaii, they all passed with flying colours.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY.
Most of us don’t take time for dadirri. We may genuinely care about reconciliation, but we’d prefer to address it in ways that align with our own cultural norms, that don’t take us outside of our comfort zone. Educational reforms. Changing the names of things (holidays, suburbs). Formal declarations (like Acknowledgement of Country). The odd plaque or painting here and there.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with these things, and they may be very well-intentioned. But are they enough? Are they effective? Are we listening?

We measure our capacity to address “Aboriginal affairs” at a societal level through metrics like levels of literacy, numeracy and tertiary education. We impose our own interpretations of success, based on our own cultural values. Again - are we really listening?

From Miriam:

“In our Aboriginal way, we learnt to listen from our earliest days. We could not live good and useful lives unless we listened. This was the normal way for us to learn – not by asking questions. We learnt by watching and listening, waiting and then acting. Our people have passed on this way of listening for over 40,000 years… There is no need to reflect too much and to do a lot of thinking. It is just being aware.”

CULTURE EVOLVES.

Culture is not static. History shows us it is futile to seek for anything to be as it always has been. Everything changes. Each of the great spiritual traditions acknowledge that resistance to the inevitable transience of things causes suffering.

We know this through our own life experiences.

When two cultures meet, they transform into something new, replacing the old. This is the phenomenon of syncretism. Wonderful things have come of the syncretic movement. Jazz music. Denim jeans. Tomatoes on pizza. Democracy.

Miriam Rose herself is an example of this. She’s a Christian.

Her people know it’s Easter time not by following any calendar. They know by when the blue water lilies appear.

Dadirr is a path for us to discover what truly always was and always will be. And it has nothing to do with land stewardship. Certain traditions call it the Self, or Buddha Nature. Others call it the Great Spirit, Dharma or the Tao. Some call it God.