It’s been over a month now since all of you have returned to the USA, back to what is familiar, full of the unfamiliar, carrying new experiences with you into your homes, communities, families. 
Steev and I are still here in Thailand, and we think about you and our time together and talk about it often. I’ve been mulling over the words I would like to put to the time we all shared, how to add my thoughts to the beautiful posts you all made while we were here, how to reflect on the variety and depth of our month together — and you might be surprised to hear that the thing most on my mind as I sit down to write this post is the world of plants.
Plants. Plants and mountains have been in my mind these days. Steev and I have been spending a fair amount of time in the Lahu village we all visited together, as well as in the region of Doi Ang Khang, a mountain near the northernmost border of Thailand. It’s been raining an unseasonable amount here (whatever seasons mean in these days when the axis and frequency of the earth are shifting), and perhaps this extreme wetness, in which humans sometimes find themselves quite uncomfortable, but plants are clearly in a state of bliss, also draws my attention to this particular part of our world. And surely, I’ve been meditating on the state of the environment of this planet, considering how the land of northern Thailand is both healthy and in dangerous flux, as the whole world around us is transforming.
While you were all here, the question came up a number of times, since we were so involved in talking about reincarnation and karma with monks, healers, and amongst ourselves, about whether trees and plants are reincarnated as well. The answers we received were for the most part resounding no’s, or else we were met by confusion in our questioners. But perhaps we weren’t completely convinced by these answers. Perhaps we still felt more energy in the natural world, that world we touched especially when we ventured out of Chiang Mai to the villages, stupas, temples and wildernesses beyond the reaches of the city.
Last week, I was re-reading parts of the book Sacred Mountains of Northern Thailand, a part of which I gave you all a copy of at the beginning of our trip, so you could get a sense of the history and stories of these powerful mountains surrounding the space we inhabited here – Doi Chiang Dao, Doi Sutep and Doi Ang Khang. The beginning of this book discusses the environmental-Buddhist movement of the mid-twentieth century, begun by the monk Buddhadasa, and continued by his main students, Aajan Chaa and Aaajan Mun in Thailand, as well as other Thai monks and Westerners who came to study the dharma here. Buddhdasa saw the whole world, plants and animals alike, as part of the sentient movement of consciousness that continually renews itself through time, both the historical time of a single lifetime we can directly perceive as humans, and the larger cycles of time that move and transform beyond our immediate perceptions. I want to share these words of Buddhdasa with you:
“Trees, rocks, sand and even dirt can speak. This doesn’t mean, as some people believe that they are spirits (phi) or deities (thewada). Rather, if we reside in nature near trees and rocks we’ll discover feelings and thoughts arising that are truly out of the ordinary. At first we’ll feel a sense of peace and serenity which may eventually move beyond that feeling to a transcendence of self. The deep sense of calm that nature provides through separation (wiwek) from the troubles and anxieties which plague us in the day-to-day world functions to protect heart and mind. Indeed, the lessons nature teaches us lead to a new birth beyond the suffering that results from attachment to self. Trees and rocks, then, can talk to us. They help us to understand what it means to cool down from the heat of our confusion, despair, anxiety, and suffering.”
And an even stronger line from the Lotus Sutra: “Bodhisattavas each of these, I call the large trees.”
A Bodhisattva, as many of you know, in Buddhist philosophy, is a human who has reached the open, aware, awake state of consciousness we often call “enlightenment” and chosen to remain in the human realm to help all beings realize this same inherent nature of compassion in themselves. So, Buddhadasa’s words, which do not directly affirm that humans can return as plants, nonetheless continue this powerful and more ancient sentiment that plants share the same consciousness as all animals, that there are no lines of separation to be found between living beings.
As many Buddhist environmentalists have pointed out, the Buddha was born under a tree, attained his awakeness under a tree, and died under a tree, not to mention that a majority of the rest of his life was lived outdoors as well.
Recently, Steev also told me that scientists talk about the fact that plants migrate, but because their migrations take thousands or millions of years, their movements are part of one of those cycles that is difficult for humans to perceive. Unlike the migratory season of birds, whose lifetimes are similar in scale to our own and therefore very available to our immediate understanding, the lifetimes of plants, viewed as a species, are hard to encompass in our scope of perception, and yet we intimately share our space with them. In fact, as we all well know, we could not survive without them.
So I’ve been considering a few things in relation to these plant teachers.
I’ve been considering how we as humans, in this modern world, can move so quickly from place to place, moving from Chicago to Thailand in what might seem at the time like a long flight, but in the scope of movements, happens in practically an instant. Then, we can move back to where we came from, carrying new information, information, which, in its essence, is no different from that of which cells are made, of which DNA is made. We literally change our structure, the structure of our bodies, minds and spirits, in a remarkably short span of time, and then return to environments where the effects of those changes are as yet unknown — but that there will be an effect is certain.
And I’ve been thinking about how important it is, not only to me, but likely to most humans, to spend time under the trees, with the plants, among the leaves. Perhaps some of you already feel back inside certain routines, back inside a daily movement of your bodies and minds that is a bit quicker than you would like. Perhaps you are trying to hold certain insights, changes, openings that happened to you here in Thailand, on our journey.
Perhaps a simple way to recollect these thoughts and insights, these changes, and to keep them active and alive, is to spend a bit more time in the natural world. Something as simple as choosing a beautiful tree spreading its branches, bare in the winter, flowering in the spring, full green in the summer, wet in the rain, dry and crackling in the autumn, one of these bodhisattvas just around the corner from you, or just outside your door, and sit by it every day. Close your eyes and breathe.
Be with that energy, so stable, so rooted to one place, there to give what it has without thought of benefit or gain for itself. Sit there with this being that also over time we cannot see but can definitely imagine, has possibly moved from one end of the earth to another, sharing its consciousness with all the members of its species, linked to those other individuals rooted down for periods of time elsewhere, their outward forms now gone, but their spirit still able to travel, to communicate, to share.
Tomorrow, we go back to the mountains again, and I will sit with the plants.
– Michelle
