How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [27]
We notice how trees change with the seasons: in spring the delicate chartreuse haze of tiny new leaves; in autumn the yellows, oranges, and reds. In winter we see the skeletons of trees, the many different branching patterns, and the nests of birds or leaf-bundle homes of squirrels that were previously hidden by summer foliage. We become curious and learn the names of trees.
In our forest at the monastery we have a huge bigleaf maple that is about two hundred years old. It is called “the Mansion Maple” because it is home to thousands of creatures, from ferns to chipmunks to centipedes. We can imagine what it has seen passing by in its lifetime—bobcats, shrews and deer, Native Americans, Finnish farmers, and Zen monks in robes.
To restore our connection to trees, each summer at our monastery we have a weeklong silent retreat in which everyone picks a tree in the forest and sits under and with it, both in the daytime and also during the night. Each person learns something important from these hours of communion. Whenever I am working on a tangled mind-problem, I go into the woods and sit down, leaning up against a tree. I merge my awareness with the awareness of the tree, stretching my imagination from the ends of the roots deep in the damp earth to the tips of the topmost leaves blowing about in the breeze. Then I ask for the tree’s perspective on my dilemma. It always helps.
DEEPER LESSONS
Mindfulness of our continuous, inter-breathing relationship with trees and green plants can provide us with vivid awareness of our interconnectedness with all beings. Unless we are a botanist or arborist, it is easy to stop noticing these beneficial and ubiquitous companions. If a living being doesn’t catch our notice by being noisy, moving about, looking soulfully into our eyes, or being dangerous, we stop noticing it. If trees disappeared, we would notice it quickly, because we would all become overheated, get sick, and die. One young tree provides the cooling effect of ten room-sized air conditioners. Trees work in tandem with us, taking in the carbon dioxide we breathe out and releasing oxygen. An acre of trees produces four tons of oxygen a year, enough to keep eighteen people happily breathing.
A number of studies have shown that viewing natural environments containing trees for just a few minutes, or even looking at pictures of trees, can lower blood pressure, relax muscle tension, lower levels of fear and anger, reduce pain, ease stress, and shorten recovery time from surgery. We humans evolved over two hundred thousand years in close association with plants and trees. Only in the last few decades have most people been living, working, commuting—in fact, spending the entire day—in sealed boxes. We suffer when we lose our connection to nature’s nourishing and healing capacities.
A botanist once came to the monastery to teach us about the plants around us. As he walked around the grounds, he kept exclaiming happily, “Oh, what a huge red huckleberry bush!” “Oh! I’ve never seen such a big patch of yellow wood violets.” I realized that everywhere this man went, his inner experience was that of being among welcoming friends. He was never alone, always in the presence of beings whose very existence gave him joy. I imagine that bird-watchers feel the same way, that is, they are never without lovely companions.
This practice, opening our awareness to all the living beings around us, can be an antidote for the pervasive feeling of loneliness that plagues so many of us. Even in the city there are animals, birds, plants, and insects all around us. Within our bodies are billions of living beings, most of them beneficial. Their lives are intertwined with ours, and they are necessary to our health and we to