Is the inherent nature of a tree to allow all circumstances?
Allow rain to glide over its surfaces and imbue its roots with life?
Allow bugs to burrow into its crevices and woodpeckers to gouge its skin?
Allow snow to blanket its branches, and allow its arms to crack under the weight of this cold and sticky water?
Allow drought to shrivel its needles and fungus to rot its leaves?
Trees convert sugars into a variety of defensive chemicals when injured. They move these compounds in a specific pattern around the wound, and wall off infections to keep them from spreading.
Trees can also produce chemical compounds to repel specific insects, or even to attract predators to control a pest that is infecting the tree.
Trees respond to their surroundings in ways that support the preservation of their life and well being. When action is available, they don’t passively allow themselves to be harmed.
So is the inherent nature of a tree to fight circumstances?
As far as we know, trees do not have a conscious sense of self. Their actions arise independently from any mental notion of self-preservation. They don’t sit around worrying about what bugs might infest them. They only respond to whatever comes with the means available to them.
In fact, their responses flow as effortlessly as a ripple in a pond after a stone breaks its surface. A chemical signal activates a corresponding process without any thinking, analysis, or fear.
Though thinking can be incredibly useful, it makes this kind of effortless response tricky. Especially if we conflate our thoughts with our identity (as most of us do).
Are we our thoughts? If we are our thoughts, why don’t our thoughts last? Why don’t we walk around with all the thoughts we’ve ever thought or ever will think jumbling around in our minds? As soon as we think a new thought, the old one disappears. A similar thought may return, or we may end up on a train of thoughts with one informing the next, but our thoughts are not fixed things we can hold onto. They slip away just as mysteriously as they appear.
Are you your thoughts, or do thoughts simply arise and disappear in awareness?
My interest in this inquiry aligns with the question of how to cultivate more compassionate action in the world. Attachment to thoughts as part of our identity can create a sense of self-righteousness that leads to harmful actions.
Free from attachment to overanalysis or thinking spirals, trees embody the Taoist notion of Wu Wei. From Elizabeth Reninger:
“One of Taoism’s most important concepts is wu wei, which is sometimes translated as ‘non-doing’ or ‘non-action.’ A better way to think of it, however, is as a paradoxical ‘Action of non-action.’ Wu wei refers to the cultivation of a state of being in which our actions are quite effortlessly in alignment with the ebb and flow of the elemental cycles of the natural world. It is a kind of ‘going with the flow’ that is characterized by great ease and awareness, in which—without even trying—we’re able to respond perfectly to whatever situations arise.”
This Taoist concept seems in step with the explanation of compassionate action we explored last week. Is there a part of you that already knows how to act from a place of effortless flow? Have you experienced this action of non-action before? In this state, did you act in a way that contributed to balance in the world?
Recently, I was talking with my partner and I became increasingly upset. I experienced a cocktail of emotions: frustration, anger, impatience, disappointment, anxiety, and probably a few emotions we don’t have words for. And yet, in that moment, I knew these emotions were simply experiences. They weren’t inherently bad, and in this case, they were not caused by my partner. He wasn’t doing anything harmful. I was just in an agitated state due to an accumulation of emotions over the course of the day. He asked if we needed to talk something through, and I explained that there was no problem. Simply an experience of emotions.
Sometimes, there is something to talk through. Sometimes there is harm to prevent and action to take, like conversion of sugars into protective chemicals. If my partner truly had been harming me, it wouldn’t have been right or useful to say there was no problem. But in this case, the most skillful action was to not project my emotional states onto my partner, who was simply existing in the same room as me when emotions came knocking.
Believe me, this is not always how I have responded when I’m emotionally activated. You can read about many of my less skillful actions in previous posts.
But this experience highlights the power of looking deeply at your reactions and responses and considering their source. Instead of unfairly targetting my partner and proliferating the energy of these difficult emotions, the emotions had room to simply exist. I can’t say if I was officially in a state of wu wei, but I can say the emotions settled and softened when held in awareness. The action of holding these emotions instead of externalizing them led to a more peaceful evening.
I’d love to hear about your experiences with wu wei and/or flow states. Have you experienced effortless action? What was it like? Feel free to hit reply.
With heart and a sprinkle of sap,
Olivia
Thinking and emotions:
“I’ve heard it said by Zen teachers that the function of the mind is to secrete thoughts.... Thinking is simply what the mind does, in the same way that ears hear and eyes see. What we endeavor to stop is not thinking itself but the obsessive energy that gets caught up in the content of the thoughts. We practice to recognize thoughts as just another phenomenon arising. We practice to stop our belief in the solidity of our interpretation of our thoughts—our ‘story’—and the emotional patterns and judgments that often come with it.” — Keiryu Liên Shutt
Action without action:
From the Tao Te Ching (#37), as translated by Stephen Mitchell:
“The Tao never does anything, and yet through it all things are done. If powerful men and women could center themselves in it, the whole world would be transformed by itself, in its natural rhythms. People would be content with their simple, everyday lives, in harmony, and free of desire. When there is no desire, all things are at peace."