The StoryField

Forest-Thinking

Ancient stories often contain wisdom that is worth re-discovering.

I was reminded of one particular story recently, after attending a talk in Victoria on urban forestry. The name of the story is Rukkha-dhamma Jataka, or The Wisdom of Trees. It belongs to a collection of tales which are said to be the Buddha's account of his previous lives. In many of these stories, the Buddha-to-be takes birth as an animal. In some, he is born as a human. In this case, however, he comes into being as a tree-spirit, one of a class of beings who make their homes in trees, shrubs, and other plants.

The story opens with the new king sending word to all the tree-spirits (rukkha-devata) that they now have permission to live wherever they like. Though the previous king is never described, the new king’s decree suggests an autocratic ruler who was determined to control every being in his realm, including the tree-deva. Now these playful and loyal beings will be able to decide whether they want to live in trees or shrubs, in groves or forests. 

The idea of free will and choice is intriguing here. If one has true freedom to decide where and how to live, what will guide one’s decision-making? Personal preference, or the advice of a trusted guide? The narrative doesn’t wait long for the Bodhisatta (the Buddha-to-be) to appear, offering the wisdom of his experience. He advises the spirits not to take up their abode in trees that stand alone. He invites them to join him in the Sal forest, and to choose Sal trees that surround the one where he makes his home, thus establishing their home in a community of others. 

Of course, disobedience to wise counsel is necessary to the story. Despite the Bodhisatta’s words of advice, some of the tree spirits decide to take up residence in majestic Sal trees that stand alone in village squares. These trees receive the honour and veneration of local villagers, generation after generation. To reside in one of these lordly Sal trees is to be part of village life, and to feel the reflected glory and reverence offered to these trees. 

Other tree-spirits, however, follow the advice of the Bodhisatta and make their home in the grove. When a violent windstorm comes, the lordly Sal trees that stand alone come crashing to the ground, with their roots torn up. The tree-devas who chose to live in these solitary trees are now without a home. Off they go to the Sal forest, lamenting their fate. The moral of the story is very clear: better to live with others than to live alone, better to form a web of connection than to place one’s hopes on individual status and success. Underneath the moral, however, is another teaching, one that shows keen observation of the natural world: trees that grow in a community of other trees stand stronger and are less prone to the danger of fierce storms.

When I told this story at Seattle Insight Meditation Society, I had the children and adults cross their arms in front of them and hold hands to show the interweaving of tree roots. Together we repeated the Pali words “Pavana, pavana, vata-bahula” to suggest the force of the wind, while we rocked back and forth without falling over.

Even though some trees will always fall in a great windstorm, trees growing in a forest are less vulnerable than trees that stand alone. Their roots reach out under the earth and form complex grids of connection, supporting each other and also transmitting messages and nutrients.

The story reminds us that trees have much to teach us about how to live, and even perhaps, how to think.

Forest-thinking is a term used by Dr. Cecil Konijnendiyk, a professor of urban forestry at the University of British Columbia. Intuitively, we may have a sense of what this means—to adopt a way of seeing and reflecting that takes into account much more than our individual needs and desires. But the term invites other possibilities as well.

We could say that forest-thinking approaches problem-solving from a three-dimensional perspective. This includes recognizing what is present but mostly unseen--the underground networks of support and connection found in root systems in forests. What root systems are we overlooking as we tackle the serious challenges facing the planet? Forest-thinking also acknowledges what is unseen but beneficial--the invisible exhalation of trees, returning oxygen to the atmosphere. Forest-thinking, we could say, is even inclusive of another dimension, which is time. Thinking like a forest means accepting our limited life-span as individual members of a species, while recognizing that our lives have the potential to be a blessing and a benefit to future generations.

To adopt forest-thinking is to...weave communities of care in conscious, creative and beautiful ways; recognize and celebrate how these communities of care “oxygenate” the world, offering life-transforming ideas, wisdom, and practices to participants and members while also inspiring others in other “forest” communities. 

Forest-thinking is about being rooted and committed in our present circumstances and activities, while considering how we are passing along our wisdom.

Forest-thinking is multi-dimensional.

As an experiment, call to mind your last visit to a forest.

Above you, the green canopy. Around you, the underbrush or open spaces between the trunks of trees. Each trunk, when observed closely, distinct in its bark and branching. Wildflowers blooming in the shade, berries ripening. Mushrooms breaking surface, demanding attention or slyly sprouting, unseen, by a fallen tree. Moss, thick and green. Bird-sound, wind-sound, small skittering of forest creatures, humming and buzzing of insect life. A symphony of scents, from last year’s leaves to this year’s new growth, the perfume of wild blossoms. And, standing or moving in the forest, there is also a sense of the vastness of the underground networks.

Forest-thinking is a way of seeing and thinking that acknowledges the presence of many species living together in a complex web of life. It invites diversity and understands that the health and well-being of the forest depends on this diversity. As an attitude of mind, therefore, it is curious, open, and receptive, but still retains discernment and the ability to identify danger and send warning alerts along its pathways of communication.

Let's add forest-thinking to the curriculum! 

Tree Canada offers Community Tree Grants and logistical support for planting trees on school grounds and in other public spaces. It only makes sense to help children establish thriving green spaces that they care for and visit every day. 

Now is time to make forest-thinking and forest-learning part of every child’s education and experience.

 

The Music of What Happens

Two poets, one story.

Poetry matters. Of this I have no doubt. Like stories, poetry speaks in images, bypassing the discursive mind and accessing the heart’s emotional core.

Poet and teacher Mark Nepo drew an adoring crowd recently at Unity Vancouver, where he read from his book of poetry, The Way Under the Way (Sounds True, 2016). Mark had asked me to tell a couple of stories in the course of the evening and I was honoured to be part of the event.

The audience was invited to participate by asking a question or offering a reflection. One woman held up a well-read copy of Mark’s Book of Awakening. The cover was missing, the pages curling. She described how the book had been a companion and guide through her cancer journey, many years earlier. Then she held up a second copy of the same book. This one still had its covers intact. Colourful bookmarks marked favourite passages. This copy, she told us, had belonged to her husband, an academic, who'd had his own cancer journey and had died a few years earlier. 

It struck me that we express our gratitude to writers and poets not just because their words speak directly to our experience, but because the honesty and depth of their writing invites us to honour our own joys and sorrows. 

One of my stories was a personal account of visiting Ireland in 2013 and witnessing the way a poet can impact an entire nation. 

A few years ago, I received an invitation to lead a retreat in Ireland. My friend Eva runs a meditation centre in the town of Dingle, in County Kerry. The theme I planned to explore was generosity. The question I wanted to investigate was very simple, “What does it mean to live a generous life?” Over the course of the weekend, besides giving instructions in meditation, I would tell a handful of stories - folktales about giving and receiving.

I arrived in Ireland with a few days to spare, so I headed west to Connemara. One morning, after a brisk walk along the shore road near Clifden, I stopped to buy provisions and saw the headline, “Seamus Heaney, 1939 - 2013.” Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet and Nobel laureate, had died at the age of 74.

It seemed that the whole country went into mourning for this beloved poet. Bookstores and libraries set up displays of his books. On the radio, in the newspapers, and on television, stories were shared of Seamus Heaney’s generosity. Apparently, he rarely turned down an invitation to read at an event, no matter how small. 

At the funeral, one of his sons revealed that his parents had been in the habit of sending messages to each other in Latin, and the last words his father had sent to his wife were “Noli Timere - Do not afraid.” 

I had heard Seamus Heaney speak while I was at graduate school, and I knew his poetry through a friend of mine in Comox. Hearing of his sudden passing, I wanted to pay tribute in some way. But how?

Ireland being a somewhat magical place, I trusted that the right opportunity would present itself.

A few days later, I caught a bus to Dingle, arriving one day earlier than my friend Eva was expecting me. I stayed in a hostel a little ways out of town.

The next morning, I left my bag and walked the mile or so into town, thinking I would find the library and get my bearings.

As I entered Dingle, I saw a sign pointing down Green Street to the library. I turned in that direction, only to find myself passing the Dingle Bookshop. There in the window was a notice, “Poetry reading in honour of Seamus Heaney, 1 p.m.” The time was just 12:15.

I went in and spoke with the bookshop owner. She told me how her heart had been caught off guard and blown wide open by the suddenness of the poet’s death.

She was, in fact, quoting parts of Seamus Heaney’s poem "Postscript":

You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

I helped her set up the chairs for the reading. I chose a seat in the second row.

People came in, many of them holding a well-read, dog-eared copy of one of Seamus Heaney’s collections. A lovely woman, very pregnant, sat down next to me. “Are you going to read a poem?” she asked me, after we had introduced ourselves. “No,” I said, laughing. "I’m just a visitor, passing through."

The readings began, many of them prefaced by a story.

A tall woman came up to the front, carrying a large frame. At the centre of the frame was a scrap of paper with some hand-written lines of verse.

She told us how she had been working at the Dingle Hotel, where Seamus Heaney was a frequent guest. It was a rough patch in her life. Her husband had left her. She had four small children. She’d fallen in love with another man, but he lived far away. She was bereft and troubled.

One evening, she was at work behind the reception desk, when Seamus Heaney was sitting in the lobby, waiting for his wife. Seeing something in her face, he inquired into her troubles, which she unburdened to him. He listened with great sympathy and kindness.

The next morning, he handed her a hotel receipt, on the back of which he had written a few lines of his poetry, from Section XII of Station Island:

Let others wear the sackcloth and the ashes. 
Let go, let fly, forget. You’ve listened long enough. 
Now strike your note.

There were other stories like that.

There were interludes of fiddle music.

People shared how lines and images from particular poems spoke to them directly and to moments in their own lives.

My neighbour stood up and went to read a poem.

At a certain point, the host, a man named Nick, looked right at me, where I was sitting, and asked if I would like to read a poem. I said, “Yes.”

He had chosen one for me. It was this one:

Song

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

Through happenstance, I’d been given a chance to pay my respects to a great poet. And at the end of my generosity retreat, it didn’t surprise me that two of the participants, both teachers, had chosen to come because of the theme and how it felt like a way of honouring the benevolent spirit and lifelong generosity of Seamus Heaney.

So, let us be grateful to the poets who remind us to make something beautiful of our lives.

Soul Work

This week I've been listening to "Mother Night", an audio-course  with Jungian storyteller and author Clarissa Pinkola Estes. In her interview with Sounds True founder Tami Simon, Estes talks about curanderismo, an umbrella term for a spectrum of healing arts which realign a person with the treasure of his or her own soul. This has got me thinking about simple daily practices to nurture soul connection.

Five ways to stay connected to the soul:

1) By noticing the elements (earth, air, water, fire), and therefore blessing the elemental within.

Notice the wind.
Notice the air on your skin.
Notice qualities of light at different times of day, when clouds are in motion, when clouds are building.
Notice fire (bonfires, candle-light, firelight, love-light.)
Notice the earth element (leaf-piles, turned soil, compost, hills and mountains).
Notice water (rain when its falling, raindrops when the sun reappears, tidal action, streams, the wet faces of rocks, water from a faucet turned by a hand, tears.)

2) By creating ceremony (alone or with another, standing under a copper beech tree in November, receiving beauty).

3) By creating sacred spaces (one shelf, one surface that is completely empty).

4) By making something beautiful over time, or all in one stretch (a poem, a loaf of bread, a bowl of soup, an arrangement of beach stones, a card) and keeping it or giving it away.

5) By listening in new ways (to patterns of sound, to voices, to the stories of someone we love, to music, to the music in sounds we don't think of as music, like engines, footsteps, birds scattering seed).

How do you stay connected to the soul?