David Haenke is an elder from the Bioregional Movement of the U.S. He is the poet how first said to me the word ecosapien, and my imaginarium felt seen, resonating with the word which I has seen for a long time before. David was the first “white” sapien saw in a kind of deep poetic trance while praying with the Earth Mother, and the first one to induce it on my while walking with him on pavement in Missoula MT.

In Ozarks, land of the Oaks, teachers of this Bioregion

November 20, 1992

Diminishing Billions of Avatars…

Was it just an accident that Buddha attained enlightenment under

the Bo tree? Was the sacred Bo tree just there to prop him up?

Could he just as well have been sitting against a stone wall when

this momentous event in human history took place?

I think not. I believe that the tree was an essential part of

Buddha’s enlightenment. I believe that the Bo tree is as much

an avatar as the Buddha, and indeed every tree that has been,

is, and will be. All trees, till the last tree, are related,

in communication and communion: one Tree.

We usually tend to see avatars as manifesting in human form.

The attributes of the avatar are many. The capacity for

transcendent teaching or transnormal transmission of knowledge

and wisdom of all kinds, from the most practical to the

metaphysical, the spiritual, and the soul level, leading to

the great elevation of all beings who are willing to listen

and attune to these gifts. Profound if not magical or god-like

immersion in and expression of true reality. The capacity to

leave abundance behind at all levels — physical and otherwise

after the earthly manifestation is done — much more than was

taken during earthly existence. The capacity to radiate and

communicate only integrity, love, wisdom, and spirituality.

A virtual absence of negativity and entropy. The capacity to

heal, regenerate, and cleanse. The avatar is, or approaches,

perfection. Trees live perfectly. Trees are perfect.

Further, I believe that the avatar is harmonized and balanced

not only with the “higher” dimensions or chakric levels, but

with the “lower”, and the physical world as well. It’s clear

to me that the earth and the future of life are not well served

by beings who try to attain enlightenment without attending to

the physical well-being of the Earth that provides the very

energies and essences needed for enlightenment, indeed the for

the very existence of those who attempt it. “Enlightenment” is

a contradiction in terms for those who don’t give back physical

and spiritual nourishment to the Earth, and who are not in

communion with the physical dimensions of existence as well.

In all these capacities and more the tree qualifies for avatar.

Trees and plants have the “magical” (we don’t fully understand

it and can come nowhere near to duplicating it) ability to

photosynthesize — transform sunlight into the basic stuff of

life, an utterly essential and mystical transformative communion

between Universe / Sun / Earth. When the tree leaves its manifested

existence it leaves an abundance of nurture behind for all life.

It has provided oxygen, stored carbon, cleaned and cooled the

air, cleansed the water, held up the water table, prevented

erosion by its leaves slowing movement of water, created soil,

provided a home for thousands of living things, provided great

quantities of food in its fruit and flower, and literally made

and enabled the rain, warmed us, clothed us, housed us, fed us.

Working with the sun, trees suspend and reverse the second law of

thermodynamics, creating all this through their autotrophic

capacity to make negative entropy. They reverse chaos, create

order from disorder. All this, I suggest, is the mark of the

avatar. Without Tree, we are not.

Not only do trees do all this as a matter of course, but they have

the ability to reverse and heal the chaos that humans create. They

can turn back the desert, recreate the eroded soil, take our wanton

carbon sins from the air, cleanse the polluted air and waters,

recycle our shit, cool the climate, bring back the rains, make oxygen,

medicine for our diseases caused by our degeneration of the ecologies,

calm and heal our spirits and minds. Like the greatest of meditators,

perfect taoists, they do all these things without moving from one

spot in their whole life, and make no sounds that we can hear other than the

sacred musics of the winds through their leaves.

From the Tao Te Ching: “Those who say, don’t know”. Trees ask for

no thanks, ask for nothing but to be allowed to grow, not even do

they ask to be planted. What do we do? We butcher them and burn them

as if they were an enemy. The Giving Tree.

As transcendent teachers they have no peer. One differentiated

being hundreds of millions of years old, Tree and Forest is the

perfect model, a living set of literal design principles / green-

prints for the ecological economy that is the SINE QUA NON for

the continued existence of our species. When we have learned

from Tree to model our economy directly upon the natural solar

forest economy, we will finally wake from our ecocidal/sucicidal,

anthropocentric hall-of-mirrors nightmare, a nightmare for the

Earth as well. No matter what other teachers and avatars we may

harken to, I believe that Tree must be one of them.

Tree is one of the most clear and profound transmitters

for us of the soul of the Gaia being and God-through-Gaia. By

communing with Tree we get to be in clear, direct contact with

the original instructions with no interpreter, no “broker”, no

intermediary. Pure information, instruction, transmission. No

translation necessary. I don’t believe it gets any clearer or

cleaner than this. Buddha said desire was our primary nemesis,

and to be done with it was a prerequisite for enlightenment.

Tree has no desire. You can be with such a being, easily.

For communion with Tree I suggest this, keeping in mind the all-

dimensional living yin and yang relationship that always is

activated when we get near Tree. By this I mean our carbon

dioxide breath becomes Tree’s nurture — we give to this way to

Tree. Tree’s oxygen breath nurtures us. We breathe each other.

Aware of this happening, move respectfully to the tree and

embrace, inhaling the fragrance of the bark (and in season

with the right kind of tree, the leaves, fruit, flowers, or

needles; I know of no more wonderful smell than certain oak and

pine — ponderosa! — barks, and sycamore leaves): more real

interpenetration of essences. And more: touch your tongue to the

bark. You are merging without question. Now with breath and the

meditative way breathe in the whole range of being, spiritual to

physical, of the tree; with exhalation breathe your whole

infinity into the tree. In and out, preferably no thought. Or

give the tree all your thoughts, pains, struggles, ecstasies,

elations, epiphanies, sorrows, joys, fears. Tree takes it all

perfectly. Continue. This is darshan with a living avatar, I

believe. You might sit quietly beneath your Bo Tree.

Buddha said and didn’t say many great things. One of them he

said was, “Plant Five Trees”.

Written on Treestuff by David Haenke

In Ozarks, land of the Oaks, teachers of this Bioregion

November 20, 1992

The Grotto

Little Piney Watershed

Ozarks

Turtle Island

Earth