The Propensity to Be Bothered

Being Brave

I, Milarepa, am not afraid of demons.
If Milarepa was afraid of demons,
There would be little profit in a knowledge of things as they really are.

Masanobu Fukuoka: The Fear of Death

The fear of death, I think, is not so much a fear of the death of the body as it is a fear of the loss of the attachment to wealth and fame, and to the other worldly desires that are a part of everyday life. The degree of one’s fear of death is generally proportional to the depth of one’s worldly attachments and passions.

So how can we die peacefully if we do not resolve our attachments? The content of these attachments, of course, is nothing more than illusion. It is the same as when a person, believing he possesses a treasure in gold, silver, and jewels, opens the box to find only worthless bits of glass and rubble.

I have said that material things have no intrinsic value. It simply appears that they have value because people have created the conditions in which they seem to be valuable. Change the conditions and the value is lost. Value is born and disappears according to the whims of the times.

There is nothing for people to gain and nothing for them to lose. As long as people lived according to natural law, they could die peacefully at any time like withering grasses.

If a person dies naturally, then not only is that person at ease, but the minds of those around him are at peace, and there will be no regrets in the future. Ultimately, the one that announces the coming of death and delivers the final words is not a priest or a physician, but nature. The only thing for people to decide is how they can best achieve a death that complies with nature’s will.

[from Sowing Seeds in the Desert (p47-48), by Masanobu Fukuoka]

Trees

I.
In 1986, I moved with my mom and step-dad to the woods of Tennessee. Up to that point I'd grown up in residential Texas. My idea of "outdoors" was playing in the sprinkler in the front yard and not much else. I was an indoor-loving, tee-vee watching, air-conditioner-needing boy.
So this new world? The world 800 miles away from most of my friends, in a valley which blocked pretty much all television signal, and where I had chores? Yeah, I didn't like it at all.

But one day, I changed. I got off the schoolbus (I was in fifth grade), and something clicked. Literally. I heard and felt something in my head click, and suddenly everything in the world was different. I ran down my driveway in amazement, dropping my backpack along the way. I leaped across the creek and ran into the woods. Up hills, down hills, and probably touching every single tree I passed. Everything seemed like it was on fire. At one point, swinging on a branch, my weight and leverage caused a tree on the bank to uproot, and I fell into the creek. Soaked, I retrieved my backpack, went inside our house, and felt very excited to experience that all again.

From then on, outside was my place to be. I would spend every afternoon in the woods or in the creek. I loved mowing the lawn, I loved gathering firewood. When the weather was especially nice, I would sit on the roof and burn incense and listen to music. When it wasn't, I'd play outside in the rain or wind or whatever.
I still didn't care for the chores, but generally life was wonderful.

From that first day, I felt like I was in communication with everything. Not in some secret-language, "I-can-tell-trees-what-to-do" kind of way, but I felt like I was gaining knowledge constantly when I would engage in outdoor activities.

II.
I developed relationships with certain trees. There was two trees I sat between and pretended this was my home. The was a fallen tree that I vaulted over, crawled under, climbed upon. There were three hilltops on the property, but I generally spent my time on one of them. I didn't know all the trees, but I knew most of them.

I knew them in the spring, and in the summer, and the fall & winter. On my hill, many of the trees were evergreens. In the leafy summer there was one environment. In the winter there were two: the green land and the wasteland. The cedars were fun to run through, with snow flying off the needles, but the rest of the hilltop allowed running without getting whipped in the face, and offered piles of fallen leaves to dive into.

The cold air was bright and crisp. In summer, the air was thick with humidity, but my home on the hill was shaded. I looked forward to every season in its turn.

III.
I moved away from the farm in January 1999, and my family did, too.
I would go out there and enjoy the occasional afternoon, but not often.
When I moved into Nashville in 2001, I selected an apartment complex surrounded by trees. I would walk in those woods or, more often, the nearby state park.
Over the years, from one living situation to the next, I gradually phased from forest to city living. (I never fully forsook my connection, preferring to live in nature-enriched cities such as Tucson and Seattle.)

I moved back to the farm in 2011. I had only been back a handful of times since the house I grew up in burned down in 2003.

IV.
I walked up the hill, and along the paths I'd forged and followed for so many years. I was surprised how much I recognized. It wasn't winter any more, but it wasn't really spring yet, either. I walked around the wasteland, and it was much as I remembered. Then I walked into the cedars.

V.
Leslie told me once of a conversation she'd had with a healer in Tucson. Ilene was concerned, because there were termites around her house. She discovered that they were not only infesting the wood around her house, but also some of the nearby saguaro cacti.
She fretted and asked the plants what she could do--she didn't want to kill the termites; wasn't there some way to just lure them away?
"No," was the reply.
But doesn't it hurt?
"So what if it hurts?"

This conversation came to mind when I stood among the cedars.

VI.
I stood among the trees I'd spent so much time with. I could see all around me, and was confused. This was different.. how had it been before?
I saw all across the hilltop, and marveled at the fallen trees. I had played on most of them, and there didn't seem to be many newly-down ones. I understood that this was not an unusual number of fallen trees, and yet I had never before seen how many there were. They were amazing. There were trees I had balanced across twenty-five years prior, and trees I'd known both up and down. They were in various states of decomposition, and I took in the culture as I looked around.
The trees had taken in elements from the sun and the dirt and the rain. Those elements formed the bark as well as the pith, the branches and the roots. Creatures lived in the trees--inside and out.
And then the trees eventually fell over, dead. Nothing stopped, not even for a moment. Nothing even changed. Ants walking on the trees continued walking on the trees. Sunlight continued hitting the trees, and that sunlight continued to be absorbed and used. The bits changed shape, from solid to crumbly. This is where the dirt that knows how to grow the trees comes from.
The process took years in our eyes, for the object to change from tree to not-tree. But removing the concept of "tree," everything just carried on, just as it had done before we knew it was a tree, and will do after there's no tree to see there.

And then I remembered that something was different. I imagined a day from my past, running through the trees.. what was different? And then I realized.
I could see the hilltop. There had always been needles on the trees, blocking my view. And now there weren't. I looked up. There were needles on the top thirds of the trees, but the branches were all bare below that.

I remembered Ilene's conversation.
"So what?"
I had just spent several minutes taking coming to understand that the moment we call death never really comes, and the process we call death is absolutely essential. Why get worked up now?

from The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching / Touching Our Suffering

One day, after the Buddha and a group of monks finished eating lunch mindfully together, a farmer, very agitated, came by and asked, "Monks, have you seen my cows? I don't think I can survive such misfortune." The Buddha asked him, "What happened?" and the man said, "Monks, this morning all twelve of my cows ran away. And this year my whole crop of sesame plants was eaten by insects!" The Buddha said, "Sir, we have not seen your cows. Perhaps they have gone in the other direction." After the farmer went off in that direction, the Buddha turned to his Sangha and said, "Dear friends, do you know you are the happiest people on Earth? You have no cows or sesame plants to lose." We always try to accumulate more and more, and we think these "cows" are essential to our existence. In fact, they may be the obstacles that prevent us from being happy. Release your cows and become a free person. Release your cows so you can be happy.

[from The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching (p.35) by Thich Nhat Hanh]

from Path of Heroes: Relative Enlightened Mind / Transforming the Emotions

Even if we take to heart the counsel to always remember others, we must still deal with our own problems. On a personal level, our lives present one difficulty after another, affecting work or family, friends or enemies. Those we love turn away from us or grow old; at any moment they may become ill and die. Certain difficult days seem unending; untold hours are lost to confusion, frustration, and emotional upheavals. Our thoughts and actions are part of and reflect an existing pattern. Where then do we begin to penetrate such pervasive obstacles? Clearly, our problems begin with ourselves. But few people, especially those who perceive the pervasiveness of the world’s difficulties, would accept that all these problems are due to their own actions. When we look more closely, we begin to recognize the interconnections between ourselves and others. Observing similarities and relationships that we did not see before, we begin to understand how our actions affect all those around us, extending outwards like ripples from a stone tossed into the water of a pond. Without being omniscient, we can look at the pattern of human nature in operation and know where our actions will lead. We can take responsibility for deciding what patterns we wish to enact or promote. The next step, taking upon ourselves the suffering of others, seems an almost superhuman activity, the self-sacrifice it would entail unthinkable for an ordinary person. And yet mothers make such sacrifices all the time for their children. Perhaps the magnitude of this self-sacrifice is not so difficult and unimaginable as we think. Perhaps, in taking this step, we will find unexpected sources of support for sustaining and extending our capacities.

[from Path of Heroes: Birth of Enlightenment, Vol. 2 (p.343-344), by Zhechen Gyaltsab and Padma Gyurmed Namgyal, with instruction by Tarthang Tulku]