With the Trees
About a week ago, I was on the same screen porch I wrote to you from about a year ago. I was surrounded by a verdant landscape comprised of towering ash, pine, and maple. I've had the fortune of visiting this cottage and these trees several times in the last year. Through these visits, I've learned their species and their shapes, the way their branches bend toward the earth, heavy with leaves.
These trees have become companions during my morning meditations. Their shade offering a bit of relief from the summer sun. The gentle rustling of their leaves, an anchor for my practice. As I sat with my breath in the company of these trees, it occurred to me that these trees exist within this body. With each breath I take in, I receive oxygen created by these trees. This oxygen in turn moves through my bloodstream, nourishing the body, shaping the human I am right now.
And the same was true for these trees. Each time I exhaled, these trees received carbon dioxide produced by my body through their leaves, which in turn contributed to the creation of bark, branches, and the very leaves that were facilitating this exchange.
I then went one step further, realizing that with each breath, I was not only communing with the trees around me, but I was connected with the other creatures that contributed to this air. With each breath in, I was able to reach those who had breathed here before me. With each breath out, I was not only nourishing these trees but also creating nourishment for future beings that would be in the company of these trees.
It got me thinking about mindfulness practice. The Pali term most often translated as "mindfulness" can also refer to the ideas of "recollection" or "remembering." The practice of meditation is not only an opportunity to be with the present moment, but a chance to re-collect ourselves. To gather up all the ways in which we are extending -- the planning, the daydreaming, the worrying, the ruminating -- and come to this present moment. Or in this case, the opportunity to re-collect all the trees I had communed with over these visits. Re-collecting these moments of ease, of softening, of peace and knowing that they exist within on a cellular level.
I was so inspired by this exchange that I created a short meditation working with these themes. This can be a practice done at home or outside in the company of a tree. This recording includes the rustling of the very trees I write about in this post.