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

Paul Fowler read this to me, sitting in his apartment in Chiang Mai one evening as we shared our latest theories on self-healing. I love it because it reconciles two apparently contradictory ways of living, both of which I believe:

1.“Let go and go with the flow.”
2. “You create your own life.”

The first seems passive, and the second, quite active. Both seem true, but how can I let things happen and make things happen at the same time? Siddhartha tells me these are not two choices, but one . . . or as Thai people are fond of saying in English: “Same, same.” I make something happen by allowing it to happen, by stepping aside and not preventing its happening. I create something by allowing it to come into being, by admitting nothing into my soul that would resist.

The Thai healers I met in and around Chiang Mai understand this deeply. They taught me to heal my body by allowing it to heal, to relax a muscle by inviting it to relax and then giving it the space, love and support to do so. Even the woman who gave me a spectacularly uncomfortable abdominal organ massage works gradually, gently – always with my body, never against. At the first placement of her hands over my abdomen, she announces, “Ah. Energy block here,” and proceeds to focus on unsticking the energy that has been stuck for years in my core. In the process, her hands happen to find themselves quite deeply embedded in my psoas, my kidney, my pancreas, my who-knows-what . . . but this is secondary, only a result. In her mind, she is following energy. Opening, never forcing, but encouraging each block until it opens, in which case she whispers, “Thank you,” or until it doesn’t, in which case she moves on.

Another bodyworker I met, who insists that her work is Thai massage even though it looks different from all other Thai massage I’ve seen, works by allowing my muscles to float up to the surface and meet her hands. “You push, they cower away. They scared,” she says. She impersonates my muscles, flinching and curling up into a ball. “You have to work gentle, like this. Not need more than this. You work too hard.” She tells this to every Westerner I’ve seen her encounter: “You work too hard. Let it go.” She moves her hands over my body, sensing heat and emotion. She pauses, lets her hands come into contact with my body and then waits, listens, allows. “It’s okay,” I imagine her saying to my muscles, “Let it go. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.” Lying in bed that night, I feel aches reaching up from deep inside my back and hips, connecting my conscious mind with muscles I have ignored for years.

It is this touch, more than anything else, that I bring home with me, that seeps into my way of being. It is this question with which I challenge myself as I work and live: “What can I sense if I just stay here, silent and still and present? How much can I learn by just pausing and listening? How can I relax more deeply into this moment? These questions are with me in the softly-lit massage room as I settle into my first physical contact with the person on the table or the mat, the person with whom I will spend the next hour of my life. But they do not leave me when the hour is up; they follow me down the sidewalk and slide with me through the train’s closing doors, tug my sleeve as I reach into the cabinets to find dinner, climb into my lap to block my view of the computer screen and remind me to breathe.

Paul had warned me that each time he goes to Thailand, he comes back intending to keep living in that “cha, cha” (“slowly, slowly”) way, and that each time, it eventually gets lost in our forward-thinking American culture. After my month-long stay, “cha, cha” keeps me faithful company for about a week before threatening to beat a hasty retreat back across the Pacific Ocean. It isn’t the pace of my fellow CTA-riders’ footsteps or the immediacy and precision with which we demand food, service and answers; it’s my own thinking that is beginning to scare away the calm. The content of the thoughts is not the disturbing factor. The thoughts are pleasant and exciting, inspired by e-mails, phone calls and meetings and centered around new opportunities for healing, relationships and work. It’s merely their presence that overwhelms me. They show up in droves, stealing from me the pure awareness of waking up, sucking the life out of my food and turning a deliciously hot shower into the thing I have to do before going to work.

It becomes an ongoing cycle, this process of forgetting and remembering, of allowing myself to be carried away by thoughts and then feeling the gentle voice of my grounding questions, pulling me back to here and now. And slowly, I become aware of a change in my view of this, the meditation of life. The task of remaining in the present moment is becoming the joy of existing in the present moment. I first practiced meditation grudgingly, because monks and teachers told me I should, because they did and because they looked peaceful. Now I am beginning to experience how much better my food is when I taste it, how much more joy I find in walking to the train when I feel my feet on the ground. Mindfulness is growing from a distant intellectual concept into my favorite state in which to live.

With this tool, I can allow opportunities to flow into and out of my life, to receive each one as it comes . . . hold it, but gently, not pinning it too tightly to lists or calendars. Bless it, delight in it . . . then let it go, give it space to become the fullest expression of whatever it is. As Paul told me recently, “I have an amazing life and that has nothing to do with a perfect life which doesn’t exist. So I prefer to focus on the amazing part!” Instead of trying to fit each thing into its perfectly scheduled slot in my life, I choose to experience it where it is, when it is there, and to see the beauty in that.

–Riley Koren

Dearest beautiful Bamboo Goddess of the deep jungle forest in the Lahu mountains -

I worship you for bringing such a healing to our lives – introducing us to all you know – sharing everything you are – making this month a very precious time -

a chance to FREE our body – mind – soul.

Thank you so much for Michelle! You’ll be in my heart – in deep gratitude.  Karen

Thank you for the great month we shared together. So grateful for all the precious moments.

Hope to see you soon… some time… some where… some how. Alles Liebe. Karen

A new stunning discovery of this trip is Miss Amporn Srakrupan called Mor Noi – a healer of a kind, a true wisdom woman, a psychic and medical intuitive, a jewel in the lotus flower. She represents a very soft and gentle touch to the energy flow (or blockage) in the body balancing the elements, releasing tension and freeing the body from trauma and illness. Her teachings are same same to Pitchest’s – sometimes even same words or phrases. She is the yin version of how to connect to the pranamaya kosha – the energybody and activate the self-healing mechanisms of the physical body by removing energy blockages. Her touch is so soft and powerful. She does not press or sink into the body – her touch connects you a new awareness of the energy in your body. She works on both entities – the body and the mind. She has a way of calming your mind by directing him to observe and feel the body – forcing him to be completely in the body.  Once the mind is still and empty – the body is set free to heal itself. Her focus is on the stomach/belly area as the center of most body problems. She sets free emotions too understanding that most energy blockages are caused by emotions we cannot let go off and keep them in the body. As a former psychotherapist and neuropsychologist I fully comprehend now how difficult it is to heal emotional trauma through the mind compared to healing through the body. Letting go is much more difficult to achieve in the mind – while it happens quickly in the body (when the mind is still). I am being introduced to a new dimension of understanding the body mind interaction with regard to self-healing. If the healer is capable of relaxing the CNS to an extend that there is the ‘mindless’ still point – the body liberates itself from suffering – you might even be able to assist the body in reversing the dynamics of a disease. Of course the patient has to be willing to undo his/her obstacles to healthy functioning on all 4 dimensions: 1. food 2. mind 3. elements 4. kharma and listen to the body (not only the mind) for a change!

Happy or no happy na? Easy! How I enjoy learning from these extraordinary healers who remind you of the most important thing we tend to repress: just love yourself – heal yourself first – do energy healing on yourself - you come first - then give to others.

So grateful for this wake up call?! Om namo… Karen

It was a special full moon night and two days of experiencing nature and the Thai Jungle to the fullest including a Sunday bath at the waterfall.

The long house – our night quarters.

The famous coffee bean roaster made in Germany (of course): reliable and undestructable.

It was the do-it-yourself roasting group experience.

Rick was so excited to find the most famous coffee beans from a wild cat’s poop. You have to be an expert to understand this!

It was a very special and moving moment for me to be fully present in this space of self-healing – it moved me deeply to tears of joy and gratitude. Karen

The spirit gate and entrance to the village Mai Naam Rin.

Karen

I will miss this place, these people, this time; but nothing in this world can last forever and we already carry all that we need within us.

There are things, however, that resonate so deeply with something inside us.  Things that stir our emotions so profoundly that they betray words and can only be felt witing the very core of our being.  Things that demand us to stop and experience them for as long as we are able in such a transient existence.

The coffee is warm to my taste, the shrimp and rice porridge comforting to my mouth, Alicia Keys sings in harmony with the pitter-patter of raindrops, my cigarette smolders in the ashtray–I am still, there is a tear behind my eye and a lump in my throat as time pauses and i sink into one of those moment, into one of those places.  I am FULL–overwhelmed and overflowing with gratitude and love for everything and nothing, but most of all for now.