Lockdown Lessons
Mary Taylor
If you think you’ve been in lockdown for an inordinately long time, it’s not your citta vṛttis gone wild, it’s pramāna; correct perception. On-again-off-again, the world has been ordered to stay in place for almost a year! Like good yogis, we’ve watched waves of changing emotion and mind states come and go. There’s been relief for the stillness, gratitude for the space and time to reflect, empathy for those suffering, all punctuated by our individual brand—sometimes neurotic, always sacred—of dealing with the endless unknown; agitation, anxiety, numbness, fear, confusion, boredom, depression and so on. Our freedom of movement has been tampered with for so long that sometimes it feels like a tangle of reluctant roots are sprouting out of our feet to penetrate the earth in a scheme to keep us immobilized forever. When will the subjugation from this lockdown ever end? But it could be worse.
Just be glad you’re not a tree. Had that been your fate you might have experienced a brief few days of freedom and excitement when you fell from your mother as a seed and got carried away on a breeze (or pooped out by a bird). You would have found yourself nestled into a patch of rich soil where you’d germinated and eventually grown tall. Other than that, most likely you would have been in pretty much the same place for decades, if not centuries. Now that’s a lockdown.
Yet trees don’t seem too distressed by staying put; in fact, they kind of like it. Especially when they’re near others, like on tree-lined boulevards or, better yet, in forests. Botanists used to think that life in a forest was one of fierce competition for natural resources—light, water and nutrients in the soil. The faster and taller you could grow, the more light you’d could soak in and the stronger you got to insure your survival. But then scientists, like Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, began questioning this theorem. If forests are truly competitive dog-eat-dog (or in this case “tree-eat-tree”) environments, why does one species not take over entirely? Why do saplings consistently fall close to the mother tree? And from the purely human perspective, why does a walk through the woods leave us feeling calm and clear?
For over 30 years Simard has studied trees, much like those in Pacific Spirit Park, just next to UBC and pictured above. Her research has revealed the remarkable way trees are constantly communicating, adapting and navigating within their environment in order to perpetuate not only their own well being, but equally important, that of other trees and their surroundings.
When you’re a tree you’re at your healthiest when you stay put and literally tap in to what you can do to support others. Simard’s work shows that trees communicate through the fungal web that lines the forest floor and connects them. If one tree needs more carbon a nearby tree takes less and shuttles some the suffering tree’s way. Mother trees protect saplings (though, like humans, they favor their own over others) and through the network the “hub” or mother trees helps keep the entire community balanced. Trees, like virtually every aspect of nature, seem to have an intuitive understanding of non-dualism, that they are each separate yet intimately one.
In his book “The Hidden Life of Trees: What they Feel How they Communicate,” Peter Wohllenben, who spent years working in a Bavarian forest, also documents how trees interact with one another and their ecosystem, drawing parallels to the human condition. Wohllenben proposes that trees root systems are their brains. Using their “brain” they avoid danger, protect one another and thrive in groups because they are able to learn, remember, share and teach. By labeling his observations of the behavior of trees with words we as humans can relate to, like love and generosity, he reveals how closely the experience of being a tree (or any living entity) is like our own.
We are surrounded by nature and its teachings about consciousness that goes beyond and informs our limited human view. Through plants and animal life we discover teachings on the value of community, communication and above all the power of cultivating a selfless motivation to support the whole. There are geese honking overhead as they signal the flock to land in a nearby lake. We know elephants stomp the ground to produce recognizable patterns of vibration that warn other elephants miles away of impending danger. We hear prairie dogs chirping with intricate signals to inform and protect the colony. And, perhaps most of all, we feel this type of interconnectedness when, in a grumpy mood we step into a forest and without doing anything except showing up, our cortisol levels decrease so that when we emerge from the shade on the other side we feel better. Thank you trees!
This kind of cooperation and communication is what keeps our forests healthy and our world flourishing. If only we had time to pause and look closely we’d see endless examples of the strength that is accessible through interconnectedness. If we had time, maybe we’d notice our own true needs enmeshed with the needs of others, rather than being carried off on winds of mind that keep us propelled by emotion, habit and ignorance—stuck in samsara. If only we had time.
Oh! Wait a minute. We’re still in lockdown. Perhaps we do.
“Thought is a tricky tool and in unqualified hands creates absurd and often hellish situations. It can turn the Whole against its parts, the forest begins to contradict the trees.”
