Standing Like a Tree: Revolutionary Patience

A little while back, Pete wrote a post entitled, Standing Like a Tree, which spoke of a moment of clarity he had about the emotional seasons of the Microcosmos while in the Chi Gong posture of standing still like a tree (read his post here).  His post helped mark a position in the map of my thoughts, from which I have been trailing out, making inroads to connections.  Though I sense relationships between this post I’m writing and the Microcosmos, what I am writing here is more of a self-indulgent act of utilizing this space to put together ideas I’m interested in—how they relate directly to the Microcosmos or not is yet to be seen.

There is a Taoist philosophy of active nothingness—that in not doing is doing something.   It seems in this active nothingness there is much doing, or rather, the potentiality for all doing.  In the stillness of active nothingness I have found the habits of the wind, felt the voluminous movement of a lake.  There is a fulfilling energy and grand doing found in stillness.

While at Blue Mountain Center, Pete shared with another resident and me his knowledge of Tai Chi, and each morning we practiced together, most often on a dock on the lake.  This, along with periods of solitary stillness, greatly helped me connect to the wind and water I just spoke of. 

Later, he shared with us online a video of Master Lam, his teachers’ teacher, which was entitled (in a very westernized way) Stand Still, Get Fit.  In it’s original form it is a practice called, Zhan Zhuang—to stand like a tree.   In the video they say, “we do nothing when we stand still, but we gain energy from within, just like a tree….As a tree grows its deep roots, powerful trunk, and spreading branches appear motionless but the tree is actually growing from within, slowly and silently.”  While Master Lam teaches the proper technique of Zhan Zhung, said to make one strong and heal illness, he stands in a Chinese courtyard where 4000 year old trees have been contemplated for centuries.

I recommend the whole 11 minute video, but for a nice summary of these ideas check out minute 5:00 to 6:00. 

When I watched this video and heard them talk of a tree as a human—seemingly unchanging while activity, growth, and energy happen within—I was struck by the parallel to another seed of wisdom I had recently absorbed.  A major contributor to the civil rights movement, with the insight of 82 years within him, Vincent Harding (fellow BMC resident) taught me Revolutionary Patience. 

Vincent had said, “Like plants, you cannot always see the change happening in people.”  He spoke about social movements—marches and strikes—and said that, while they have their place, and an important necessary one, they are not where real change occurs.  Real change happens inside the human being, inside the human heart.  He said, “the revolution will not be televised,” and for the first time that statement made sense to me.  You cannot put on tv, cannot see the change and perhaps the struggle for it, that happens in the human heart and mind. But that is where the real revolution, the real evolution, lies.  It calls forth one of my favorite lines of Pete’s, “We attach meaning to events, but events happen in the universe and meaning happens in the human heart.”  What happens in the world happens—it is how we translate it in our hearts that matters.  It is the inner way we respond to the world that holds the power, as the inner world creates the outer.  As Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.” Revolutionary change comes from within, not from without; from being, not from doing.  Or rather, an inner being forms and feeds an outer doing, like sap moving through branches nourish and inform a leaf.

Vincent went on to tell us the story of how Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk and peace activist, was coming to give a talk in the 1960s, and arrived on the West Coast where he encountered student activists yelling, “end the war now! end the war now! out of Vietnam now!” Thich Nhat Hanh pulled the student leaders aside, and said that he was thankful for their efforts toward peace.  But that they were part of a movement that was hundreds of years old, and they needed to have patience. 

Revolutionary patience. A giant oak does not grow from an acorn to its full height overnight, or even in a season.  One must be patient.  I realized that this revolutionary patience applies not only to the evolution of the world, but to my own personal evolution.  It is a reminder that even when I feel stagnated, I am growing and changing in ways I cannot necessarily perceive, and I must be patient with myself.  And I remember that I am a tree, a plant, with a rich inner life.  And I remember that in stillness, in active nothingness, I am energized. 

Amongst all this, I sense the power of the inner world, the unseen forces, and the natural order that connects it all.