Why do trees live longer than (edit: most) humans?

[GrandTrinity]

This is an intersting koan, eh?

 

Could it be that they are silent? And simply absorbing the cosmic energy with patience? Perhaps their minds are not as cluttered as our seemingly "evolved" brains. Can longevity be a measure of merger with nature/the environment and even enlightenment? Those taoists who live beyond hundreds of, surely must have some to this same revelation. When the mind is empty, there is no room for sickness. A tree without one of its essential elements, like water, however, starts to think "i need water or I am going to die!" And if the tree extends its roots further, and still cant find it, it dies! Same with sunlight, air and Earth! The tree needs the magnetic metal core of the planet to ground its electromagnetic body between celestial spheres.

 

Talk about a tree hugging hippy? Gotta love thinking about the many levels of tree consciousness, its fire of awareness in the spring. All hail to the axis mundi!

Edited May 28, 2006 by GrandTrinity

[Smile]

Could it be that they are silent?

Trees speak. Ask Plato on this one and he may tell you about hours he spent meditating with one tree and what developed after that.

 

Maybe he will write something on his blog: http://www.nyctaoist.com

Edited May 28, 2006 by Smile

[neimad]

This is an intersting koan, eh?

 

Could it be that they are silent? And simply absorbing the cosmic energy with patience? Perhaps their minds are not as cluttered as our seemingly "evolved" brains. Can longevity be a measure of merger with nature/the environment and even enlightenment? Those taoists who live beyond hundreds of, surely must have some to this same revelation. When the mind is empty, there is no room for sickness. A tree without one of its essential elements, like water, however, starts to think "i need water or I am going to die!" And if the tree extends its roots further, and still cant find it, it dies! Same with sunlight, air and Earth! The tree needs the magnetic metal core of the planet to ground its electromagnetic body between celestial spheres.

 

Talk about a tree hugging hippy? Gotta love thinking about the many levels of tree consciousness, its fire of awareness in the spring. All hail to the axis mundi!

 

i think the essence of trees are existing on a slightly different dimensional plane (remember that all dimensions are around us at all times, it's just frequency levels) so they are not really in the 5-sense realm as us... where they are i think it vibrates slower, time occurrs at a different rate (we must seem like awfully speedy characters to them.... think "lord of the rings" the second one, i think it was). this is probably part of the reason they appear to reside in a coherent form for a longer period of our concept of time.

 

trees are not silent, but they are probably engaged in much more appropriate forms of communication with the environment than us with our frivolous language, more wu-wei i guess.....

 

just some thoughts.

[GrandTrinity]

Yes we have a lot to learn from them. Look at how smart they are! Trees are so wise it blows my mind. They are so damn smart. I wish to be as smart as a tree.

 

Look at that stillness and that alignment! It is always silent, always moving subtle energies, always present in the physical form, it does not strive with others, it has all kinds of merit, compassion and clarity and light, it grows really tall and has roots just as deep, it has mad cool colors in the fall, I could go on forever about the infinite intelligence of trees. Has anyone read the book The Emporer Wears no Clothes by Jack Herer? Some real tree wisdom is up in that text phosho.

[Cameron]

Well, they do zhan zhuang 24 hrs a day...also being deeply plugged in to Mother Earth can't be bad.

[GrandTrinity]

I meant to make the topic of this thread: humans supposedly have much higher intellectual capabilities than trees so therefore we should easily be able to master our internal proccesses and live longer (or something like this).

 

For real now. Whose with me?

[Cameron]

Who knows how long humans can really live. My guess is we have the potential to live for over 140 years or whatever the record is(barring of course, myths of Immortals who live until they are 1000 or something) from the Buddhist perspective focusing on longetivity is not where it is at so much as realizing it is a precious opportunity to be born a human since humans alone can become enlightened.

 

Lately I have read some people saying animals got enlightened also. I don't know might be true. But it's still probably easiest for a human.

 

Good luck on your taoist quest of longevity.

Edited May 29, 2006 by Cameron

[karen]

I'm not sure that longevity correlates with intelligence. Then we'd have to look at what we mean by intelligence! But I think a simple way to look at this is that each organism has its true nature. It may be the nature of certain plants, and some microorganisms to live only one day. Maybe some animals, I don't know. Some trees live hundreds of years. Each are just living according to their intrinsic nature.

 

When humans live according to their true nature, the potential lifespan can be well over 100 years, and then the person just leaves the body consciously without disease or trauma. We have the potential to take on disease that can't be overcome by the life force alone, and we also have the potential to use our consciousness to overcome disease.

 

But we can't measure consciousness in terms of health, as if a highly developed person should be physically healthy, and we can't judge what should be a particular person's potential, because we each get the experiences we happen to need.

 

According to Rudolf Steiner's view, humans have 4 bodies: physical, etheric, astral and ego (soul) bodies. Animals have 3: physical, etheric and astral. Plants have 2: physical and etheric. Plants express greater vitality in a certain sense, because the expression of their being is in the etheric which is about the metabolic forces, life force. The astrality of animals is about instinct.

 

But humans have the soul body which allows us to develop consciousness. It's sort of a tradeoff, where we lose some of that plant-like vitality in order to allow for the evolution of consciousness. There's a lot more in that body of knowledge, fascinating stuff if you have the patience to read Steiner!

 

Karen