This year because I have been sick and restricted mostly to my home, I noticed trees change color. It was a beautiful fall. I went for some walks. I noticed my breath, heard birds chirp, watched them eat the bread crumbs that I leave them every morning. And then sometimes, when I came out to leave some food for birds and ants, I would notice Sun's concentrated- attention on one tree --and it would take my breath away.
It was as if that one area or the tree had been bathing in love and warmth. Something, I think I could use. But every time I saw a scene like this I would feel a oneness with the trees. As is taught to us in India, we are not separate from any thing from the universe. Grains of sand, trees, leaves, ants, elephants ---life courses through us, making us animate or inanimate...but life nevertheless....the way we differentiate it is --Jad aur chetan...unconscious vs. conscious (sentient--brain dead humans are not sentient), not alive or dead. Just like body without atman (there is a difference between atman and soul. Atman reincarnates, and takes on different bodies, at different times. A soul does not reincarnate)--is lifeless, and its life is an indication of atman, similarly this sansaar (the moral world) is infused by Paramatman (the highest atman)--and so every form of life is an indication of that Paramatman. An ant is just as worthy of being saved as a human being (read some about Jainism if you are interested. They walk bare feet so as not to hurt even ants. They cover their mouths, so as not to ingest any insect accidentally. That is the level to which peace, ahimsa (non-violence) is to be practiced. Any indication of chetna--consciousness is an indication of that Highest Atman. And therefore our greeting is to bow. Bow when we meet. Nameste ----now used after yoga classes--means, I bow to the divinity in you. When you and I are in that place, we are one.
It is that experience of oneness that I feel with trees, no matter what season it is...even when covered with snow, nature makes me feel an expansion. Tagore, affectionately called Gurudev--the teacher, had commented how no matter how much praise was written in western literature, it was hardly considered one with humanity. Or humanity was hardly considered the arm or extension of Prakriti (the sanskrit word for nature and also used in the same sense as 'a person's nature'). Nature according to western tradition and religions was only meant to be used by human beings, just like animals. 'Thou shall have dominion of all the animals'. A oneness with animals? trees? rivers? Well, I grew up with it. Whitman (Leaves of Grass), Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Hegel, T.S Eliot and other transcendentalists were influenced by Hinduism. T.S. Eliott even said, 'Vedic (hindu) philosophy makes european philosophers seem like school boys).
Today, I heard a colleague at lunch reading, read from a book where scientists are talking about 'plants are thinking beings'. Well, as always the west thinks its finding something new. We said it thousands of years ago. Native americans, who were killed with a Bible in one hand, and guns in the others, knew it when they said...'Man did not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. What is man without the beasts? If all beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man' (Chief Seattle).
The above picture is special to me because you can see how limited the circumference is of Sun's warmth on cold Swedish day--and yet it gives glow that warms us just by looking at it. It is restricted to the trees beyond the trees in the foreground. Notice, those are not orange leaves, for all the leaves are gone. It is just the glow of the Sun.
In the silence that comes on us during exhaustion, there is still this oneness---that I always feel when on a cold cold day, I experience a drop of Golden Sun!!
