Growing like thunderheads all summer long, the trees and plants of
the woodlands thrive and cover every bit of the mountain until they
finally begin to lose their momentum, and in the dark shadows of a
forest which has gone through its adolescence and prime, one feels
a touch of sadness.
The forest in September is so abundant in foliage that underneath
everything is darkened. However, in winter, trees lose their leaves
and you can
see through the woods very well. Then the dramatic transformation
a mixed-species forest goes through every year in early spring
is truly
extraordinary. Young shoots growing from the branches of trees
burn like light green flames, and before long, the forest which
had been
empty is filled with green leaves. Walking over the pass which
leads to my house and observing the changes, I understand the Buddhist
phenomenon of “existence emerging from nothingness” and the phenomenon
from modern physics of “energy transforming into matter.” I
understand that these abstract, philosophical ideas represent exactly
what is happening here.
“
Energy transforming into matter” is the process of photosynthesis — sunshine
energy, with carbon dioxide, creating organic compounds, that is to
say plants creating leaves with the energy that they have taken in. “Existence
emerging from nothingness” can be seen when shoots and then leaves
appear from the bare branches of the trees using that potent energy-nourishment.
And then in autumn they fall off of the trees and return into the forest,
or into the original state of “emptiness” or “nothingness.”
Thus in the forest I am able to learn that these phases of the
circulation of energy, the “formation and disappearance” are
common to all phenomena of energy, and this understanding can advance
my
work in the contemplation of the universe as a phenomenon of energy.
Translation by Atsuko Watanabe
From "A
Different Kind of Luxury" by Andy Couturier,
forthcoming from Stone Bridge Press.
