春山疊亂青 The spring mountains covered with layers of most variegated colors,

春水漾虚碧 And the spring streams fancifully laden with the reflecting images.

寥寥天地間 Standing by himself between heaven and earth,

獨立望何極 Facing infinitude of beings.

Ch'an master Hsüeh-t'ou Ch'ung-hsien (雪竇重顯 Secchõ Jûken, 980-1052)

(Zen and Japanese Culture 298)

NATURE (Chapter 1) - by Ralph Waldo Emerson

(best reading I could find...at least it exists. maybe I should do my own reading?)

∞ as 1

We're reaching the time of year that Nature lures me back into her artless arms, her sensational, primeval bosom of branches and vegetation and endless, celestial sky. To be with Nature is to be a part of a sacred congregation. With Nature I am never alone. 

"To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society…But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's interesting to me that certain people consider spending time alone in the woods isolation. When I enter the woods on my own, I am not going to be alone. I am attending a forgone family reunion of man with Nature, side-by-side around the fire, chanting for freedom and simplicity and new reverberations of love throughout the forest, throughout the entire natural world. I am eleven years old hiking up the mountain that climbed beyond my best friend's backyard. I am eight years old, sitting around the bonfire with my grandfather in the consuming darkness of the forest. I am six years old, fishing with my uncle in a hidden pond, miles from the road. When I am with Nature I am, again, a child.

"The sun illuminates only the eye of man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood...In the woods, too a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

On my first camping trip last season (a night in the woods at a nearby state park, a two mile hike, carrying water and provisions, to a primitive camping area in the center of the forest), I found myself alone in a small clearing behind a row of pine trees. The air was perfumed with sap and silence, I laid down my mat and crossed my legs in preparation for meditation. I prayed for understanding, enlightenment, love all around. I sat as a stone with my eye lids hanging open, pouring in the scene to ponder thoughtlessly. 

The tree-line vegetation rustled and swayed and a possum strolled out into the clearing. "Ah, Company!" I thought. He halted his curious wanderings and stared in my direction, tense in attentive defense. I prayed for his understanding of the peace that existed here between us, all around us. Seconds passed slowly. He finally broke his stare and meandered through the tall weeds and dried grass into a large patch of dead palm frans. He disappeared from view, and I could hear him moving away. Soon his rustling stopped completely. I felt an odd twinge of abandonment. Detachment. The possum had left me to myself.

I sunk back into meditation. 

Some amount of time passed in quietude. The trees stood motionless around me, and I sat motionless among them, meekly deferential in their presence. I was one with my surroundings, wholly accepting the pure nature of humanity just as it exists in the forest's trees and animals and creeping vegetation, every organism that springs from the soil or scurries across it. I was at the center of an everlasting assembly, a reunion of man with Nature and the humbling equality of all life. How could I feel alone in the midst of such life and lightness of being? We're all one. We're all alone together.