Meditations on Transcendence

  THE UPSIDE TREE Arin first noticed the world bending at the edges. It wasn’t dramatic, nothing that would make headlines. Reflections lingered a fraction too long, footsteps echoed before contact, as if reality were rehearsing itself and growing tired of the delay. He ignored it, until the night the sky opened. The skyline flickered once and peeled back like a curtain, revealing something that did not belong to any sky he had ever known. A tree hung there, impossibly vast, its roots blazing above like a silent constellation, its branches pouring downward in a slow, endless cascade. The world—his world—was not beneath it, but inside it. He found himself no longer on the street but standing within a forest of descending limbs. The air felt aware. Leaves shimmered and murmured in tones that bypassed language. Then came the glow. At the tips of the branches, small shoots began to bloom, each one bright, precise, and quietly irresistible. They did not call out. They suggested. A taste...

Tree is a strange thing. It comes in poetry and also as analogy in various conceptual explanations. Love under trees or singing songs rotating around trees in many famous bollywood songs is common. Why this fuss all about a tree? Even in Hatha yoga, tree finds its signature as Vrikshasana, the tree pose. Supposedly the tree teaches us to lead life as an observer instead of active participant. Act like a participant but think and feel like a observer. Great people have achieved enlightenment under a tree. from Gautama to Newton eureka moments are triggered in the shelter of a tree. From romance to knowledge to enlightenment to just afternoon nap, all happens under a tree. Many parts of a tree like root, branch, trunk has found its way in daily lexicon. For example, mooladhara chakra tuning helps one to get rooted. Sri Krishna has shown that a tree can explain the architecture and purpose of cosmos. Study the tree and climb away to liberating freedom is his message in 15th chapter Gita. ...