Forest

The forest is a wonderful habitat. Recently I heard a little story about a man who whistled a melody whenever he entered the forest. After a while, the animals recognized him by it and accepted his presence. They no longer ran away, sometimes even greeted him. Most of the time we do not see the forest as it is at all, because we often disturb it. Today I was in the forest. Instead of going for a walk as usual, I meditated a little and then took a short midday nap on the forest floor. It is dry here, so dry that there are hardly any ants, the ground is soft, the air clear after yesterday’s brief rain. In the shade it is cool, the bands of light pleasant. The trees do not wander, they are rooted in their being. They are not restless. In the collective, they grow differently than when they stand freely. As a collective, they are considerate of one another, give one another room; you see this in the canopy, in the branches and the spacing, and in the realm of roots. In the realm of roots there is a kind of altruism. Large trees help small ones grow, since the small ones do not yet share the light in the crowns. A tree as part of a forest is in communication. Through scent messengers, trees seem to communicate with one another. In the company of trees I become quiet. Life is possible without running around.

There is something incredibly calming, timeless, connected about sleeping in the forest. In the forest we find rhizomes: plants of the same kind connecting, but also different plants connecting. Gilles Deleuze did not use the rhizome merely as a metaphor for thought, but thought as part of a rhizome. As a philosopher of immanence, trained through Spinoza, he is a difficult-to-grasp, materialist, nonreductionist, creative mind whom I want to read in India. My suspicion is that his philosophy resonates with India’s spirituality, Hindu complexity and philosophizing in the forest of the Upanishads.