Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters

"Trees are not symbols or allegories in this foundational Taoist text. Rather, they’re examples of the true nature of life. Chuang Tzu’s Inner Chapters present a refreshingly ecological philosophy. In Chuang Tzu, the Earth is a “mighty mudball”, time is measured by the life-spans of ancient trees and ephemeral mushrooms, and human perception emerges from the quirks of our physiology and ecology. All human philosophies are natural productions, but many philosophies paradoxically deny this. Our thoughts emerge like tree trunks and branches from roots in our nervous systems, so they’re just as wild and natural as any tree, bird, or bacterium. Yet these very thoughts imagine a separation from the rest of the community of life, a fracture caused by gods or by the sophistication of our culture, mind, and technology. Chuang Tzu punctures this inflated view using wit, paradox, irony, and exposition. He transmutes human exceptionalism into a humbler view, one informed by kinship and belonging on this Earth. Trees appear at pivotal moments in his stories, places where he makes clear that humans are of the earth. Other traditions of course also have trees at the centre of their narratives — the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, The Bodhi tree under which Buddha was enlightened, the Norse Yggdrasil, the creation trees of the Amazon, even the evolutionary tree of Darwinian genealogy – a near-universal recognition of the importance of trees to our lives. Chuang Tzu seems to me to go deeper, actually listening to trees rather than using them only as symbols and narrative devices. Yes, I visited a dozen trees around the world to listen to their stories. By “listening” I mean literally tuning my ears (and some electronic sensors) to trees to hear their many sounds. I also mean listening to people whose lives are connected to each tree and scientists who have studied the lives of trees. “Sound is a great way into tree lives: it passes around and through solid barriers, revealing what our eyes cannot see” I found that trees are full of sound. Wind reveals the architecture of branches and leaves, and every tree has its own wind sound, emerging from the particularities of its physiology. For example, the Ponderosa pine trees in Colorado sound different from the same species in California. Each has needles adapted to the local environment, so each sounds different when the wind blows. Broad-leaves trees are likewise diverse in their voices. City trees have rumbles of buses and trains running through them, changing the form of their wood. Birds sing from branches and insects gnaw on inner wood. Then there are tree sounds that are too high for our ears, but by listening with sensitive microphones I heard water pulsing through branches and ultrasonic clicks of distress in drought-stricken twigs. These sounds combined with the voices of market vendors working in the trees’ shade, birds singing amid traffic noise, and surf sucking at palm roots on an eroding beach. Sound is a great way into tree lives: it passes around and through solid barriers, revealing what our eyes cannot see."