Banner KennethENorton.com - Photo by Kenneth E. Norton

Click image to be directed to the most recent episode and for the List of the Scent of Light episodes in the Archive

(Photo by Kenneth E. Norton)

Scent of Light Episode

by Ken Norton

Contemplating Nature

Broadcast on November 8, 2020

Mp3 Player

The audio file above is the spoken word recording without background music provided to Radio KOWS 92.5 FM broadcast of the Scent of Light episode for insert into the Radio Spotlight Magazine with host Andre Marc.

Subscribe to Podcast via Itunes or Podcasts.com

RSS Feed

Transcript

In this episode on the Scent of Light I will speak on Contemplating Nature.

As a college student fifty years ago I discovered Hermann Hesse’s novels, and I especially liked his presentation of the story of Siddhartha. It gave me a sense that I was embarking on a spiritual journey this life. It was under the Bodhi tree that Siddhartha realized he was the Buddha. I recently discovered Hesse’s short writing on trees in his 1920 collection Wandering: Notes and Sketches, and I will read it to you as an example of a contemplation of one beautiful aspect of Nature to realize more of who we are.

And now, Hermann Hesse on Trees:

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.

Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

Thank you, Hermann Hesse for your writings to help stimulate our Self-realization.

This is Ken Norton on the Scent Of Light. You can contact me via Ken at KennethENorton.com and I would be glad to hear from you. The Scent of Light episodes are archived on the web together with links referenced here at kennethenorton.com. Thanks for listening.

Reference: Hermann Hesse, Wandering: Notes and Sketches (1920) - translated into English by James Wright. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1972.

----

About the Author and Producer

Ken Norton earned his master's degree in Materials Science from Stanford University as the Vietnam War was ending. During that time Ken served as the personal assistant to a poet/sociologist Dr. William Hermanns as he prepared his writings for publication, exposing Ken to not only the sciences but also the humanities and comparative religion for making conscious and conscionable choices.

Ken is a regular contributor to Radio Spotlight Magazine with his episodes on the Scent of Light.