I received a lesson recently on caring for apple trees. The apple tree in the Monastery garden is struggling a bit, and so we went to our local nursery to get some advice about how we might best help the tree. The central trunk is quite dead, some branches are iffy, some are sporting blossoms and leaves, some are growing little sucker stems.
The “tree guy” was introduced and walked me right over to where their fruit trees are to demonstrate what to do. Take off the dead parts, remove some suckers and leaves, make sure enough remain to protect the branches from sun scald and from wind, aim to have as many of the nutrients as possible go to where the tree will bear fruit.
Even as he was talking about what needed to be removed, and actually removing a few leaves from his trees to demonstrate, he was excited and beaming at the trees. He handled them with great care. There was no sense, I projected, that there was anything wrong about the parts that die, the suckers that actually won’t produce fruit, the leaves that we should thin. All were just part of the life cycle of the tree, in its relationship with humans who are tending it.
Everything is the Buddha, the live parts, the struggling parts, the abundant parts, the straggly parts. Even the trunk that gave it all life to begin with and has now died. It’s all of a piece, it’s all connected. What a great reminder. And how appropriate that it came at a nursery, a place where the life cycle opens and closes, moving from seed to compost to new life, again and yet again.
Gassho,
Penny