Meditation and trees

During the meditation practice tonight, I reflected on the way that mediation is always an effort. It is a beautiful effort and often simultaneously a futile one, because there are so many scattered thoughts that come to mind, and one is not in control a lot of the time. But what I shared in tonight's session was about a time when I had visited an art gallery and had seen a painting of trees which are blown around by violent winds. On that day, I reflected on how the tree looked so strong in spite of being buffeted this way and that by the harshest natural forces. I sometimes think this is how meditation is; the tree represents a kind of stability in one's method that one can turn back to many times. But with stability comes fragility, and vice versa: without the ability to "bend" with the breezes around it, the tree would not have an easy time contending with the natural forces. In fact, the tree's strength is a combination of "being" and "non being", "resilience" and "surrender", which allow it to continue to stand in one place while contending with the natural elements.