the leaf,the stem,the tree.

Yesterday we were read this little story during our end of session mindfulness exercise.I hadn't heard it before & personally I found it to be really great in terms of being mindful of the moment and not judging it,but also the story itself brought on a sense of "happily-sad" within me so I thought I'd share it.

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Like a leaf we have many stems

by Thich Nhat Hanh

I was in a park on an autumn day and was sunken into the contemplation of a very small, but beautiful leaf, formed like a heart. It was almost red in color and hung on a branch, short before falling off. I spent a lot of time with it and asked several questions to the leaf. I found out that it was like a mother for the tree. Usually we assume that the tree is the mother and the leaves are the children, but as I looked at the leaf I recognized that the leaf is a mother for the tree as well.

The sap that the roots send up contains only water and minerals, which are not sufficient for the nourishment of the tree. The tree sends the sap to the leaves, which turn the raw sap into ripe one and send it back, with the help of sunlight and gas, to nourish the tree. Therefore the leaf is like a mother for the tree. Since the leaf is connected to the tree through the stem, the communication between both is easy to see.

We have no more stem that connects us to our mother, but as we were in her womb we had the umbilical cord, a very long stem. The oxygen and the nutrients that we needed were delivered to us through that stem. On the day of your birth it was cut, though, and we fell into the illusion that we started to become independent.

This is not true. We did in fact depend on our mother for a long time afterwards. And we have many more mothers. The Earth is our mother. We have a multitude of stems that connect us to Mother Earth. There are stems connecting us to the clouds. When the clouds stay away, we don't have water to drink. We consist of at least 70 % of water and the stem between the cloud and us is really existing. The same is true for the river, the forest, the forest worker and the farmer. There are hundreds of thousands of stems connecting us to everything in the cosmos, carrying us and enabling us to exist. Do you see the connection between you and me? If you are not here, I am not here as well. This is so. If you are not able to see it, look closer, and you will notice.

I asked the leaf if it was afraid, because it was autumn and all the other leaves fell down. The leaf said to me "No. During all of spring and summer I was very much alive. I worked hard and helped to nourish the tree, and now much of myself is in the tree. I am not limited to this form. I am also present in all of the tree and when I return to the ground I will continue to nourish the tree. Therefore I'm not afraid. When I leave this branch and sail to the ground, I will wave at the tree and tell it "I will see you again soon."

On that day, the wind came and after a while I saw the leaf part from the tree and float down to the earth. It was dancing happily, because while still floating it saw itself already present in the tree. It was so happy. I bent my head and knew that I have to learn a lot from this leaf.



(From a collection of texts by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.)

If the text reads awkward in some place, it is not the fault of the author, but of the translator, myself.
Eilthireach