No man is an island

And back to California for the holidays! The movie player on the seat in front of me wasn't working so I had a chance to delve into Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism (2000) - just what I needed to start pondering my upcoming spring "Religion and Ecology" class, which I've promised will center "Buddhist perspectives." One very happy discovery, a short work by Japanese monk and visionary 明恵 Myōe (1173-1232) entitled "Letter to an Island," enacts the nonduality of animate and inanimate, Buddha and the rest, by addressing an island (conveniently if coincidentally called Karma) Myoen knows from childhood. 

Dear Mr. Island, it begins, How have you been since the last time I saw you? After I returned from visiting you, I have neither received any message from you, nor have I sent any greetings to you. then swiftly moves into preaching: I think about your physical form as something tied to the world of desire, a kind of concrete manifestation, an object visible to the eye, a condition perceivable by the faculty of sight, and a substance composed of earth, air, fire, and water that can be experienced as color, smell, taste, and touch. Since the nature of physical form is identical to wisdom, there is nothing that is not enlightened. Since the nature of wisdom is identical to the underlying principle of the universe, there is no place it does not reach. 

So Mr. Island isn't distant or even really an island, but assuredly a friend! After a little more learned disquisition, Myōe becomes personal again. 

Even as I speak to you in this way, tears fill my eyes. Though so much time has passed since I saw you so long ago, I can never forget the memory of how much fun I had playing on your island shores. I am filled with a great longing for you in my heart, and I take no delight in passing time without having the time to see you.

And then there is the large cherry tree that I remember so fondly. There are times when I so want to send a letter to the tree to ask how it is doing, but I am afraid that people will say that I am crazy to send a letter to a tree that cannot speak. Though I think of doing it, I refrain in deference to the custom of this irrational world. But really, those who think that a letter to a tree is crazy are not our friends. ...

This would make a nice bridge from "Religion of Trees"!

Myoe, "Letter to the Island," trans. George J. Tanabe, Jr., in Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism ed. Stephanie Kaza and Kenneth Kraft (Boston and London: Shambalah, 2000), 63-65; portrait of Myōe in a tree from Kōsanji, Kyoto