Cherry blossoms

On the subject of the tree, the Chinese character for tree shows the root. If we’re asked to draw a tree, we just draw the trunk and the foliage, that’s a tree, but to Chinese, that’s not a tree at all. There’s at least as much below the ground as there is above the ground. That which is below the ground is as important or more important than what’s above the ground. That is the whole tree.

Now, one of the illustrations given, which is quite an important one for people who are doing practice, is of the cherry tree. The cherry tree flowers just for two or three weeks, once a year, and the Japanese cherry, it doesn’t have fruit or much in the way of fragrance, but it blossoms very beautifully. Their blossoms don’t rot on the branch, but when they’re still in their fullness they fall. This is said to be an illustration for a man of the true spiritual way. That in the fullness, he can easily leave the branch without any regrets or hanging on past the time.

Now the illustration given is this, people turn up in hundreds of thousands to see the cherry blossoms, and they hang poems on the trees even now. Many of the people, the ordinary people can write poems, and they hang them on the trees, and they come to appreciate these cherry blossoms. I have in front of my house three streets with Japanese cherries, and if you go out on the night when the moon is nearly full and see the white cherry blossoms, it’s a sight that you never forget. This happens once a year.

The illustration given is this, people see that wonderful flowering, and then at other times of the year the cherries are not flowering, so they think somehow the cherries are failing; but this isn’t so. The three weeks of blossoming and the 49 weeks when the roots are going deeper, when as the Chinese phrase goes, that the thunder enters the earth, the vitality goes right down into the root. That and the period of the blossoming is a unity. It’s not that the cherry’s depressed and sad and failing, then suddenly it has a wonderful success; and then that success, alas, is all too passing, taken away. No, it’s a single tree; and this, what to the human being is the moment of glory, and the time when the vitality is in the roots, form a unity.

I give one example from judo. An experienced teacher can look at the build of a keen young student, the limbs all differ and the proportions differ, but sometimes they have an exceptional facility with one particular movement. He can see that this could develop into a particular throw which is rather difficult to do, and he says to him, now look, “If you practise this throw,” which he shows him, “You practise it a hundred thousand times by then you will have got the knack. There’s a sort of knack, which can’t be imitated or taught, but it can only be felt. You’ll get the knack.”

Now, he practises and he fails and fails. Might take some time but if you think of a hundred thousand, a keen student, apart from his ordinary competitive practice, he might do say 100 a day, and then in a year, that would be 30,000, assuming he practices six days a week, as most of them do, if not seven. Then in three years he could have got through a hundred thousand. Then, he will have got the knack. It would be quite wrong for him to think, “Oh, of course, I’ve still got two years to go.” No, he may get it any time. What the teacher is telling him is that it may take a hundred thousand repetitions, and often does, to get that knack. The student doesn’t think that.  He thinks, “Today, today, today.” When he tries, he thinks, “Now, now, now,” and he tries his 100. Well, this is also a hint for spiritual practice. People are told it will take a long time. It does take a long time in many cases, but it doesn’t follow that there’s got to be a particular length of time. The awareness is there and can be realized today, today, today.

Now, as one further illustration which you might find a parallel to, when a promising young judo man is told this by a really experienced teacher, now this is faith. The teacher has faith in him. Pupils don’t realize that, they think faith is a question for the pupil. No, the teacher has faith that he’ll be able to do this. Otherwise, he wouldn’t teach it to him. He does it for about six months, and he fails and he fails and fails. Now, from a teacher’s point of view, the hundred thousand failures and the one success form a unity. They’re not failures. They form a unity, the a hundred thousand movements and the ones success. Just like the cherry trees. It’s not that the cherry tree’s failing and failing and failing to put out flowers. It forms a unity, the roots are going deep and then it’ll come out.

© Trevor Leggett

Titles in this series are:

Part 1: Fingers and Moons

Part 2: Cherry blossoms

Part 3: Fingers are the methods

Part 4: Imitations do not lead to anything

Part 5: The trees on Mount Ibuka