Martin LeFevre: Falling Leaves, and Squirrels

One is so accustomed to seeing the gray squirrels in the parkland leap from branch to branch with perfect dexterity that it came as quite a shock to see one miss his mark and fall into the creek.

But plop into the water the hapless squirrel did. Though the animal seemed nonplussed at first, it soon recovered, swam to the shore, and went about its business.

Three thin trees intersect over the creek at this place, two from the side I sit on, one from the other side where there’s a picnic site. Though very tall, their shape, symmetry, and beauty surpass that of any cathedral. Especially at this time of year, when the foliage is in its autumnal splendor, and the big sycamore and small oak leaves rain down with the slightest breeze onto the stream.

It seems more people are unashamed to be seen alone and ‘doing nothing’ in the parkland, since a variety of people come down and sit for a bit. One person told me she feels something special at this particular place. When a human being repeatedly awakens a meditative state in a given place, it consecrates it.

The small sanctuary, one of a few sitting places in the park, is in the middle of town, surrounded by subdivisions. The park itself is but a strip of land less than a quarter mile across, but it is the lifeline of this northern California town.

Stacks of leaves have collected in front of the rocks that protrude out of the stream. They are pages from the book of three seasons, telling, in their colorless, decaying death (even as their comrades continue to emblazon the trees), of spring’s new life and summer’s searing days.

Experience is like those leaves, encoded and enfolded in the brain as memory. With right observation (that is, completely passive attention, without goal or effort) the brain releases its leaves of memory, and one is made new and whole.

Innocence is a matter of space. For the mind to breathe free again, as we all did every moment as children, the mind-as-thought, based on the illusory security of memory and self, has to yield, and let go.

Humans are the only animals on earth that grow psychologically old. Every other animal on this planet wakes up each day as if it was the first day of its life. Very few ask, why does the past accrete in man? And is its suffocating accumulation an ineluctable part of our consciousness, and aging?

A young man rides his bike into site across the stream, which is paved for access by people in wheelchairs. He circles the picnic table, nods slightly at the man across the creek, and pedals back up to the park road. He is the only visitor in over an hour, though many people stream by two hundred meters away. I watched one kid joyfully speeding by on a skateboard, pulled by two dogs as if he was on a dogsled.

What drives a squirrel to perform the hazardous acrobatic feat of climbing high into a tree overhanging a stream and jump from one thin branch to another to scurry down the other side? It certainly isn’t a plan, or even an idea as humans have and are prompted to act from, although of course some unconscious memory must play a part.

The same drive that exists in animals is also in us, but it gets narrowed down, and eventually the flame goes out. The world, it is said, breaks us all sooner or later. It need not be so, but the life within one cannot be taken for granted, for when the fire goes out, it’s only rekindled with great difficulty. Keeping one’s drive alive should be the first lesson every parent teaches his or her child, not how to adapt to a sick society.

Memory plays no part in immediate perception. The mind is completely quiet. It can be disconcerting. There have been meditative states when one could not remember where one was, and when everything and everyone looked completely unfamiliar because recognition, which after all is a function of memory, was inoperative.

That sounds like a nightmare to most people, but it is actually a state of boundless joy. To be sure, pangs of primal fear have accompanied such moments. But a few simple questions, springing from an intelligence beyond thought, allay the fear. One remembers what one needs to remember.

It’s been a number of years, but when I used to backpack alone, the first night invariably brought a storm of emotions and thoughts. But by the second night the chattering mind and pent up emotions gave way to the pregnant silence and profound clarity that every contemplative seeks, but few find.

One’s question since then has been: What relationship do such states in the human being, which mirror the wilderness and creation itself, have to do with this world?

I still don’t know the answer to that question. But I am clear about one thing: If one doesn’t inwardly leave the world on a regular basis, one is inevitably engulfed and destroyed by it.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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