The Deliberate Oaks

“The Deliberate Oaks” from the New York Times Op-Ed page, November, 1968:

The oaks are deliberate trees, slow to leaf out in the spring, slow of growth, slow to color in the fall, and even reluctant to shed their outworn leaves which sometimes cling to the branches until new leaves burst from the buds in the spring. . .

  Reading this, I’m reminded how much it bugged me (an expression used in those days), throwing sticks for proud Daiquiri in Central Park, that oak leaves clung to their branches all through winter.  “Be gone!” I commanded, “away with you!  This is not what I wish for; not how it should be.

  A lot of things bugged me—expectations, anticipations, wanting to live my life as I thought it should be lived; expecting others to behave in a certain way.  This got me into a lot of trouble, including with my own troubled mind.  Tensions? – you bet!

  Eighteen years later, forty-two years ago, October 24, 1976, I connected with the teachings of the Buddha, and it required years of practicing with the Lotus Sutra to, in effect, release the personal ego—free myself from expectations, anticipations, rather than living in the moment.  Perhaps traces of these tired mental gyrations still linger like the oak leaves, clinging to the trees beyond the seasons, and yet Buddhist contemplation in the last ten years or so (and a lot of other conciliatory teachings resonating with the practice of the Buddha’s teachings) has helped to disperse these debilitating desires and expectations.

  The freedom to be – now – to perceive – to know – that the pure energy of life is available to me and to all with whom I commune.  And still the leaves cling to the oak trees beyond the season – to California sycamores as well – “challenging the rush of time.”  But no longer do I join with them, clinging to the branches of illusory expectations.

“Your head is right where it should be – stop turning to the outside.” – Lin Chi in the 2005 Zen Calendar.