That is Home. That is Happiness.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labour is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day leads you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
7 Responses to “That is Home. That is Happiness.”
Reblogged this on Luceafar Luceafarul VIII `Lucifer.
Beautiful! Thanks Philip!. I’ve never been able to find an English translation of this book. I love Hermann Hesse.
Yours with the Yew
Maca.
Reblogged this on A Piney Walk About.
This is what I have felt but could not put into words. Thank you so much, Philip. This is a keeper.
This is a wonderful piece of writing .
I was out in the Abel Tasman park last weekend listening trees .
I began with a Hongi. Breathing together . Slowly , honouring the lack of seperation.
When I was sitting and really listening to the wisdom of the tree . I had an incredible connection with a Taniwha , a green spirit of the forest . It was a creature beyond space and time . Closer to a frequency of light .
I see the idea of ‘coming home’ to the self ,through energetic connection with the trees. With their ability to anchor themselves so deeply in space and time. I value this as one of the key tools that can be taken here from Hesse’s work .
Absolutely Ian! Lucky you in Abel Tasman!!! 🙂
So beautiful and inspiring… Trees’ wordless wisdom is a powerful gift to each and every one of us. Thank you so much for sharing with us. Blessings, Andrea
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