The Arboreal Buddha

Apr 16

It seems obvious—to me anyhow—that the famous enlightenment discovered by Gautama Buddha while sitting under the Bodhi tree for 49 days is precisely an arboreal enlightenment. I presume—but can only imagine—that by sitting under a tree for that long the Buddha made contact with the alien tree and, more than that, received a transmission of what can only be a kind of forest revelation. Like as if the supreme buddhist virtue of equanimity had been directly channeled from the sylvan mystery. By equanimity I mean specifically an increased sensitivity and decreased reactivity—less reactionary, in the Marxist sense of that word. Does not this virtue seem rather treeish? As if it were composed, almost entirely, out of the heavy heady vibes of the forest with its attendant biome labyrinth, sanctuary, stability, darkness, symbiosis, species-diversity, all underwritten by the life/death entanglements of mycelium teleology? John Muir said that the forest is the entrance to the universe; clearly the Buddha found this entrance and made the further startling discovery that this universe is none other than Mind.