In "Religion of Trees" tomorrow we're reading from Stephanie Kaza's Conversations with Trees: An Intimate Ecology (originally An attentive heart, 1993). A biologist and Soto Zen Buddhist, she writes from experiences of shikantaza
只管打坐
- "just sitting" - with various trees, mainly up and down the Northwest American Coast. While shikantaza is just sitting without agenda, Kaza notes that her project is inspired by Dogen's familiar Mountains and Rivers Sutra. Attending to a mountain or river or tree we find it connected to all things.
in the course of studying mountains and rivers in depth, one sees them explode into all the phenomena that support their existence - clouds, stones, people walking, animals crawling, the earth shaking. Then mountains are not mountains, rivers are not rivers in the original sense. Proceeding with this investigation, one finally pierces through to the truth of the entirety of existence, including the mind of the perceiver. Then mountains are once again mountains and rivers once again rivers, but now the depth of understanding penetrates, informs, and transforms the perceiver into a participant in the mountain's existence. (9-10)
One early chapter describes how Kaza's peace was seared by the sound of chainsaws cutting up a tree that had fallen across a nearby road, before soon being removed without a trace. With its tiny teeth moving at an invisibly rapid rate ... The tool is more powerful than the hand that holds it, an emblem of mindless living.
I, too, know something about moving fast. The faster I move, the more likely I am to forget where I am. There isn't time to notice and be present with what is right in front of me; I am too busy moving fast. The faster I go, the more a consume unconsciously. I eat the ground below my feet without even noticing. I become lost in the dizzying thrill of speed. I forget where I am because I am cut off at the roots. It is that root connection that maintains the life of the tree and my life. It is not possible to stay rooted at breakneck speeds. Can a chain saw stay consciouss at such speeds? I don't think so. And then it breeds unconsciousness in its users. (109)
I hope students read through my selections, because in the last one, which comes right after one on the power of mindfulness, Kaza is herself wielding a chainsaw. The topic is assembling a woodpile, first from a cord of bought wood, and then from pieces she cuts herself, from a forest thinned for fire protection - but she's also pondering the "koan" What is my relationship with wood? (169) Dependent on wood to stay warm in the winter she approaches stacking and cutting with a requesting heart (172).
Each cut requires a diamond mind - sharp focus and attention on the wood and saw. This is dangerous activity: one false move could land the saw in my leg or forehead. Mindfulness is not something to dabble in here; it is sheer necessity. I ask each piece - how will you respond to this saw? Where are your knots and hard places? How can I be most attentive to your shape and form? This is the artist's question - how does one work with the materials to honor them? How do I become the material that is being worked?
The subject shifts. I am no longer just listening to the wood. I am engaging completely in this relationship; I am meeting the tree with total presence. The chainsaw brings us to the point of intimacy, the hinge point around which all aspects of the story turn - fire, woodpile, oil, mind, danger, connection - each interpenetrating in the meeting of our bodies. (175)
Will my students be willing to go this far? Our class has danced happily around trees but has so far skirted the question of our relationship with wood, a relationship more chainsaw than sitter. Maybe they'll be aided by the exquisite image that accompanies this chapter (171, above), a lithograph by Davis Te Selle called "Diamond Mind," where the grain of each piece of stacked wood is lovingly reproduced.
Stephanie Kaza, Conversations with Trees: An Intimate Ecology (Boulder: Shambalah, 2019)
