Nature Meditation

You human beings!

           After searching a comfortable place, I sat peacefully on a piece of stone in the midst of natural grass and green trees. Many young and old trees, green with monsoon, with green and lively grass around and enthusiastic creepers. All seemed to flourish with life and joy, perhaps because of the previous day’s rain.

As I sat, trying to communicate with the nature, suddenly a thought occurred to me. The trees… how happily they are swinging and rejoicing, and when there is no water, or good soil, how miserably they die… what an undeserved death they get! I saw a bird, very happily singing and searching for food. I though, what a life they have… no time table for anything, no rules and regulations, no worry about anything at all. They live, exist and die an unknown death. When they will die, they don’t know, off course nobody knows about one’s death. What a waste of life! Only because they are not human. I was looking with contempt on that swinging tree, that restless bird, what is their life worth?

I felt as if the tree sensed what I was thinking… that’s why I felt as if it started to talk to me. It said, “What do you think, you are superior, you are great, just because you are human, just because you are rational, you can think, you have systematic life?” I looked in great surprise, it continued, “Look at us, we don’t bother about useless things, like you. Our heavenly father gives us life, and we enjoy it. We have nothing to regret, nothing to worry. When we get good rain, good mud, we rejoice that God our creator takes care of us. When there is no water, no productive land, and we have to die, we don’t feel bad about it, for it happens with the will of one who created us. We do only what He wants us to do. We know, he wants that when we are happy, we should rejoice, when we see our end, accept it. No regret for yesterday, no worry for tomorrow.”

I was dumb founded. It was talking philosophically, “You human beings! Because you have brain, you have thinking faculty; you use it worrying about useless things. You plan and re-plan, for what? Can you change God’s planning by trying to plan for yourself? When he gives happiness, you worry, how long this happiness will remain, how I can get some more happiness. Doing this, you ruin your own peace of mind; you lose the privilege of enjoying peace and happiness. When he gives you pain and sorrow, you start thinking about the causes of it, repercussions of it; in the process you lose the “fun” of facing them sincerely. You start blaming that your heavenly father does not love you and does not care for you.”

It kept on saying more, but I felt bereft of my thinking faculty, my brain had melted away. I got up quietly from my place and slowly moved as if ashamed of myself being a rational human being.

- B. Johnson Maria