Study the teachings of the pine tree, the bamboo, and the plum blossom. The pine is evergreen, firmly rooted, and venerable. The bamboo is strong, resilient, unbreakable. The plum blossom is hardy, fragrant, and elegant.
Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.
Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and you do not learn.
For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones.
The seed of a bamboo tree is planted, fertilized and watered. Nothing happens for the first year.
There´s no sign of growth.
Not even a hint.
The same thing happens - or doesn´t happen - the second year.
And then the third year.
The tree is carefully watered and fertilized each year,
but nothing shows. No growth. No anything.
For eight years it can continue. Eight years!
Then - after the eight years of fertilizing and watering have passed, with nothing to show for it - the bamboo tree suddenly sprouts and grows thirty feet in three months!
Destroy the man of wicked thoughts, Like a bamboo-tree with its fruit.
The patient. The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience: - they give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity.
I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic - I use this metaphor a lot but I'll use it again - it's like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries - it's just what happens with this being, now.
Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.
There was once a bundle of matches, and they were frightfully proud because of their high origin. Their family tree, that is to say the great pine tree of which they were each a little splinter, had been the giant of the forest.
How much I can learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer.
A pine tree standeth lonely In the North on an upland bare; It standeth whitely shrouded With snow, and sleepeth there. It dreameth of a Palm tree Which far in the East alone, In the mournful silence standeth On its ridge of burning stone.
Many parts of a pine tree are edible.
Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.
There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.
When we shout at the oak tree, the oak tree is not offended. When we praise the oak tree, it doesn't raise its nose. We can learn the Dharma from the oak tree; therefore, the oak tree is part of our Dharmakaya. We can learn from everything that is around, that is in us.