The tree
The tree
Quoting the wisdom of a Native American, Mohanji advocates giving and caring as the only sensible path towards the future
A Native American elder sat with a few students under a tree, giving them a talk on the relevance of human life. One of the students who had read the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, started asking questions based on it. The elder looked at the young man in silence for some time. Finally, he pointed at a tree ahead and spoke:
That tree! How unassuming! How giving! How silent! How patient! This is what perfect awareness looks like. The tree takes only what it needs—earth, water, air, space, and sunlight. It silently gathers its nourishment from the earth and gives back fruits and seeds. It takes. It gives. Perfect balance. Look at the creepers around its trunk. They need the tree. They not only cling to it but also eat from it. The tree remains unaffected. What comes and goes is not a concern to the tree. Learn from this tree how to lead your life. Whatever you gain from here without giving back is your burden. It causes imbalance. Whatever you give is your net worth. What you take from here, you leave it all behind when you die. Be completely unaffected, like the tree. Who takes, who gives, who cares?
The elder went back to his silence. All fell silent too.
The book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, made perfect sense. In this mad rush for paltry conquests, we become recklessly animalistic. Even animals do not eat or procreate for pleasure. They do everything within the boundaries of inherent instinct. Humans are pleasure-oriented, not always happiness-oriented. Happiness is in giving, sharing, and loving. All our seeming conquests and passing glories only serve as gratifications, some forgotten, some remembered. There is no guarantee that posterity will remember us unless we give more than we take from here. The future has nothing to do with our personal glories.
Great seers of the past had explained great philosophies for a harmonious coexistence. The secret is in sharing and caring. Modern education completely ignores it. In the world of profits, sensitivity is traded for money and suffering is the result. When any being on earth suffers, energetically, every being suffers. We all are inseparably one—the permanent aspect of the otherwise completely perishable.
It is time we create human humans: beings who consistently express selflessness, compassion, kindness, and unconditional love. The world population (close to 7.5 billion) is harbouring delusions of control, conquest, and competition. This is definitely not the recommended future. We have seen WW1 WW2, Auschwitz, Stalin, Pol Pot, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and many other wars, displacements, destruction, and deaths. Who gained? The energies of the world are disturbed by just one species: the human species. Global warming is a wake-up call. And so is the ecological disaster caused by animal farming. Awake. Arise. Be the change the world needs to be.