Nature can show the way to transform suffering. She can give me ways of seeing that as a human being I may not have been taught. The more held by the earth, the more I hold the earth. During these times of national and international crisis; where it’s hard to know what is a step that actually could make a positive difference…I remember to actually see this tree.

This tree is on my favorite hike in Big Sur, California. There is solace in being on the same land long enough to see it through different changes. Maybe it is like being in a marriage and you see your partner through so many different challenges it gives you some trust for the years to come. Or you see your children or grandchildren grow and have to really think back to remember how little they were even a few years ago. My relationship with lands around my home is like that. I notice, but sometimes I also forget.

I forget the fires that happened over the years. I forgot the fire in Big Sur that burned most of the trees that were around this tree. I forgot how the smoke made the air almost un-breathable even where I live 25 miles from Big Sur. I forgot how orange the sky looked and having to check the air quality index before knowing if I could go to work. I forgot us all longing for it to end. But now that our democracy, what we call democracy is on fire, I am remembering the Big Sur fire and the Resilience Tree.

When I first revisited this land post fire, this tree was the one tree that hadn’t burned. It was scarred but still standing. Like all trees, this tree did what it naturally does when under massive duress of fire; it threw out it’s best seeds to the land around it. So the species of Tree could continue. Sometimes it takes the fires for these seeds to be activated.

I don’t remember who I learned that from. It wasn’t taught in my classroom. The land herself teaches you what the classroom didn’t teach you if you are paying attention. The baby tree sprouts started immediately the year after the fire. I would see the tree with all her little babies surrounding her and it would make me smile. Sometimes we stop noticing the miracles because we have seen them before. I guess that happened a bit with me on this hike.

Did you know that the genocide in Tibet is what forced the Dalai Lama to follow the route a seer predicted for his safe escape when he was only sixteen? Without millions of Tibetans, monks, civilians and all of Tibetan society going through what China called, “The Peaceful Liberation of Tibet”…the Dalai Lama’s teachings would not have gone out to the whole world. Clearly that was mass murder followed by occupation, not a peaceful liberation. A firestorm of violence.

There is something to throwing out your best seeds even in the hardest situations for those children yet to come. That’s what I learned from the Resilience Tree. With her, I’ve watched the baby seedlings grow up. They’re teen trees now. Her scars from the fire I can’t even find on this towering pine now. In the years since the fire, the land has spawned flowers that didn’t used to be there before. Life continues, nature continues, in a different manifestation.

Human beings can be like trees. We can choose to throw out our best seeds for future generations even in the most trying and painful circumstances. Deep under the ground the roots of the trees are all intermingled together. That also is like human beings. On the surface there are all of these different nationalities and different looking, believing and acting humanoids but underneath it all…we are dependent upon and connected with each other.

Suffering is the catalyst for something higher to evolve, if we choose that path. I met Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk and peace maker through the poem…”Please Call Me by My True Names.” Like the Resilience Tree reminds me that throwing our best seeds out is the choice for humanity now, that poem reminds me there is no ‘Them’ out there. As much as my ego would like to have an enemy to blame. Even if the enemy is us.

Rather to look deeper for who truly is the enemy. To be still enough to calm the rage that comes from feeling helpless or desperate. The eyes of ego will look at whoever it thinks is the biggest Enemy of the hour to punish or blame. That gets played out over and over everywhere. But there is another way to look. To look with the eyes of compassion and understanding.

First calm the fires of rage, fear, despair…then look deeper. Part of my best seeds, are the seeds I have received from others. While the poem “Call Me by My True Names” helps me remember all that is out there is in me; the poem he wrote for his students during the war reminds me not to get caught in strong emotions. Now is the time to be reminded not to be a prisoner of emotions like hatred or anger. Feeding anger, hatred and vengeance leads to never ending cycles of violence and suffering.

Please enjoy this poem…’Recommendation,’ written by Thich Nhat Hanh when he was losing some of his students killed in the war and cautioned others against hating. He wanted his students to remember not to get caught in hatred, fear, or enmity…especially in the moments of death. I share the poem as a reminder to myself as well as you for these crazy times.

“Recommendation“

Promise me,

promise me this day,

promise me now,

while the sun is overhead

exactly at the zenith,

promise me:

even as they

strike you down

with a mountain of hatred and violence;

even as they step on you and crush you

like a worm,

even as they dismember and disembowel

you,

remember brother, remember:

man is not our enemy.

The only thing worthy of you is compassion-

invincible, limitless, unconditional.

Hatred will never let you face

the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone

with your courage intact, your eyes kind, untroubled

(even as no one sees them),

out of your smile

will bloom a flower.

And those who love you

will behold you

across ten thousand worlds of birth and

dying.

Alone again,

I will go with bent head,

knowing that love has become eternal.

On the long, rough road

the sun and moon will continue to shine.

_________________

“Man is not the enemy. Our enemy is hatred, anger, ignorance, and fear.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, 1965