Tree Of Life

We are all familiar with the unflattering expression, "He can't see the forest for the trees". Similarly, it can be said that most of us don't see the tree for the leaves. We fail to see the Tree of Life because we are fascinated by the leaves. We are so obsessed by millions of little fragments of foilage that we are not aware of the tree at all. We do not see that without the tree the leaves do not have any life -- that it is the sap, coming from the very life of the tree, that flows into the leaves and supports them. In the modern world most of the emphasis is on separateness, on the leaf rather than the tree. Every day in countless ways we receive the message, 'Find your joy in your own way, find your life in your own way, find your fulfillment in your own way.' This drive for personal satisfaction is based on complete fiction: that the leaf can prosper without the living tree. -- Eknath Easwaran, more at http://www.nilgiri.org (One of his better-known books, Your Life Is Your Message, took its title from an incident in Gandhi’s life. An American reporter came up to Gandhi at his train window and asked breathlessly for a message to take back to his people. Gandhi scrawled some words on a piece of paper and handed it back as the train pulled out of the station. The paper read, “My life is my message.”)