Begin by sensing into the support you have from the ground,
Whether you're resting at the foot of a tree,
Or on a stool or mat,
And paying attention to the actual sensations of contact,
Feeling right into the ground,
Finding for yourself a position of stability and balance,
Both comfortable and alert,
Sensing into your feet,
Your legs,
Your hips,
Your lower and your upper body,
Your arms,
Shoulders,
Your neck and your head.
And when you're ready,
Just noticing your breath,
Paying close attention to the actual physical sensations,
Feeling each breath as it comes in,
And each breath as it goes out,
Just letting the breath be precisely as it is,
Without trying to change or to regulate it in any way,
Allowing it to flow with its own rhythm and its own pace,
Easily and naturally,
Just letting your breath be your breath,
With a sense of being complete and whole in this moment.
And as you rest here,
Letting an image or a sense form in your mind's eye of the most magnificent or beautiful tree that you know or have seen or can imagine,
Letting it gradually come into greater focus,
Perhaps with its tip almost touching the clouds,
Its solid roots reaching down deep into the earth,
Its strong and centred trunk,
Noticing how upright it is,
Its own posture and poise,
How solid and unmoving at its base,
Yet perhaps yielding to the wind higher up,
And how beautiful,
Whether seen from a distance or close up,
Whether with full leaves or blossom or flowers or fruit,
Noticing the textured bark,
Perhaps with knots and hollows or other plants growing between them,
Maybe with a single crown or a series of branches,
Just observing and noting its qualities.
And then when you feel ready,
Seeing if you can bring this sense of the tree into your own body,
So that your body and the tree in your mind's eye become one,
Sharing in that stillness at the base,
Flexibility and ability to yield,
You become the tree.
Grounded in your posture,
Your head becomes the crown,
Supported by the rest of your body and affording a panoramic view,
Your shoulders and arms are the branches,
The torso the solid trunk,
Your legs and your feet the roots,
Experiencing in your body a sense of uplift,
A sense of strength and stability.
And with each breath as you continue resting here,
Becoming a little more a breathing tree,
Alive and vital,
Completely what you are,
Beyond words and thought,
Centered and grounded.
And as you rest here,
Becoming aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky,
The light and the shadows and colours are changing virtually every moment in your leaves and your branches,
And your surface teems with life and activity,
Rivulets of water,
Insects,
Plants,
Birds.
As the tree rests,
Seeing and feeling how night follows day and day follows night,
The bright warming sun followed by the cool night sky and the gradual dawning of a new day.
Through it all the tree just rests,
Experiencing change in each moment,
Constantly changing,
Yet always just being itself.
It remains as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day.
In summer the leaves are green and lush,
In the autumn they shine like a coat of brilliant fire,
In winter they've fallen and the branches are bare.
In any season you may find yourself enshrouded by fog or pelted by rain,
And people may come to walk past the tree,
Perhaps barely noticing it,
Or perhaps stopping to breathe in the deep aromas as they bathe in the forest and comment on how beautiful it is.
Yet none of this matters to the tree,
Which remains at all times its essential self.
Its magnificence and beauty are not changed one bit by whether people see it or not,
It just rests being itself.
Even when at times visited by violent storms,
By snow,
By rain,
By winds,
By thunder or lightning,
Through it all the tree simply bends and yields and is.
And when spring comes with new growth,
Flowers bloom and birds sing once again,
Through it all the tree continues to rest,
Yielding to the weather,
To the world of appearances,
To the seasons,
To the activity ebbing and flowing around it.
It may help us to see that our thoughts and our feelings,
Our preoccupations,
Our own emotional storms and crises,
Even the things that happen to us are very much like the weather around the tree.
We tend to take it all personally,
But its strongest characteristic is impersonal.
The weather of our own lives is not to be ignored or denied,
It is to be encountered,
Honored,
Felt,
Known for what it is and held in awareness.
And in holding it in this way,
We may come to know a deeper silence and stillness and wisdom.
Trees have this to teach us and much more if we can be open.
And so in the time that remains,
Continuing to sustain the tree meditation on your own in silence,
Moment by moment.
