Herodotus wrote that Xerxes on his march to Greece “came across a plane-tree of such beauty that he was moved to decorate it with golden ornaments and to appoint a guardian for it in perpetuity.”*
Well, I have beheld many such trees. I cannot decorate them – except with my emanation – but I photograph them as a tribute, and show their enshrined images to others.
Everything we do is for the spirit within us – and for others (as is everything done by others to us). The more we are aware of this, the more the act may be called altruistic.
The reason, if such there be, for knowing the spirit within us is that we can dedicate our lives to being altruistic.
For years I had to use a faulty electric hand drier in the toilet of an office building I visit very frequently. Sometimes it would turn on when, as instructed, I placed my hands under the nozzle, or if I hit it – just so. But next time in the same place, it would not.
Hakuin Ekaku, the great Zen master made his life statement with his final piece of calligraphy: “a giant character for ‘midst,’ with the inscription, ‘Meditation in the MIDST of action is a billion times superior to meditation in stillness.’”*
Action Meditation: the Soul at work.
* Ed. Sushila Blackman, Graceful Exits (New York: Weatherhill, 1997), p.
