There is No Tree

There is only the forest.

The ego is one of the most difficult aspects of my life that I have struggled with as I have engaged in my Buddhist practice. Consciousness, by its nature, is driven by the ego. We are literally incapable of escaping ourselves and our senses. To quote my favorite literary Kinch, "Ineluctable modality of the visible"; we cannot elect to see, to hear, to be ("Proteus" from Ulysses by James Joyce).

But almost as an act of rebellion against our oppressor, we take pride in our consciousness and spawn an ego, a self, a being (whatever signifier you wish to use). We then make divisions (linguistic divisions, mind you) that separate this consciousness from that consciousness, this state from the other, arguably in an attempt to reclaim power over the thing imposed on us. After all, if our consciousness and our ability to exist was forced onto us, then maybe be can find a sense of reclamation or redress through the naming and categorizing of said consciousness.

Buddhism offers a fascinating answer that, for me, sticks: there is no self and that we are an empty bowl. In the Prajnaparamita, it is referenced as Śūnyatā or literally emptiness of void. The image of the bowl, often used for alms by monks, functions practically as a gauge for food. But it is also an important symbol for the emptiness of being. Ayyā Medhānandī Bhikkhunī, a Theravadin Buddhist monk, writes that his empty alms bowl is essential for "coming empty-handed before the laity to receive material nourishment and responding to their generosity." The bowl doubly functions as a meditation tool as he is asked to "meditate on the emptiness of my bowl – consciously relinquishing desire for food and accepting hunger. Bearing hunger with faith led me beyond despair to a gratitude and joy for what I did receive – a feeling of fullness that was not borne of food" (Source).

This kind of practice served as the inspiration for my own fasting and dieting practice, but is also the extension of the practice for the non-self, the emptiness of all things and being. It is a common mantra for me to, during meditation, imagine myself as a bowl filled with attachments, emotions, memories, desires, and emotions and to empty that bowl through my breath. That important visual acts as a reminder that everything in that bowl is an expression of ego, an extension of attachment, and has the capacity to stagnate, to spoil, and to eventually become a cesspool that breeds discontentment and misery. After all, stagnant water eventually procures disease. The goal here is to exist as a river, knowing full well that we are, in fact, only a bowl.

It is with this mindset that I reflected on the trees found in my backyard. I have had an incredibly privileged life and this journal and my current actions are attempts to reflect on this lift and direct it in a way that will benefit all; I wish to end the samsara cycle. From my yard, I can see literally hundreds of oak trees, many of which are interconnected in roots and branches. Some trees are new and their branches and fate are tied with the ancient trees near them. Some trees are diseased, and their fate is tied to the healthy ones growing near too. Some are cut and trimmed, maintained with care and grace. They are placed alongside other trees often ignored, placed further from the path and sight and left untouched by man.

If man were to be a tree, it would be clear that much like I observe the forest, it would be really easy to cease to see man. In other words, if we look beyond man, it is easy to see that man is simply an extension of the forest of humanity, that all harm done to another is merely harming the forest that grows intertwined and interconnected. After all, what benefit is there to shame the diseased tree when the branches and roots are intertwined? What benefit is there to shame and show anger to those miserable and striving for material gain, striving for fame, if our fates are intertwined? It is not infrequent that we can observe one tree falling because of another's poor roots.

In this light, what is a human being, if not like a tree? The roots (buried, unseen) are our principles: the Dharma, the Buddha-nature, the ground of belief. Some call it virtue, others scripture or conscience, but it nourishes everything above. The trunk is our presence in the world; the visible self shaped by those roots, the integrity of what we’ve absorbed and become. The branches are our actions, reaching out, intersecting with others, weaving lives together in cause and effect. And the fruit? That is the impact we leave behind: joy or sorrow, healing or harm. Yet like the tree, none of these stand alone. Roots depend on soil, branches on wind, fruit on time. Each part is empty of self, but full of connection.

Biologically, the brain exists to move; only creatures that move possess nervous systems. But what of speech? As profoundly social beings, we evolved language not just to communicate, but to draw distinctions between food and stone, danger and safety; divisions necessary for survival. Lacan argues that language arises from absence, from lack: a child learns the word “hungry” not to name fullness, but to signal the ache of emptiness. Language, in this way, is a grasping toward clarity in a world shaped by void.

So why do we have a self? What need does it serve? What emptiness does it attempt to fill?

Perhaps the self, like language, arises to soothe the ineluctable truth of our condition: our lack of control, us thrown into being. And so we name the self. We clothe it in stories and symbols, hoping this fiction might satisfy. But often, it does the opposite. Naming the self becomes a kind of starvation disguised as nourishment, a desperate attempt to find peace by dividing what cannot be divided.

It is like filling the alms bowl with food that cannot satiate, but only stagnate. And when that food begins to rot, we cling to it. We grow attached to the thing we mistook for ourselves, though it was always just a temporary offering, never meant to be consumed, never capable of sustaining us. Still, we hesitate to empty the bowl, to let go of what was never truly ours.

Instead, perhaps it is better to sit and let go. To see the tree as the forest, and the forest in each tree. To see the bowl as the river, and the river as the bowl. To sit (not to strive, not to fill) but to be. Empty. Present. Whole in our emptiness.

Written July 9, 2025

Last Edited July 9, 2025