meditation on a pear tree: enjoying life from a fruit perspective

 "in the universe there is a huge tree which nourishes all unborn souls"

                                                                                                                           Aztec belief

Just a few days ago I was sitting on top of a pear tree meditating. Looking down under me, I watched my two horses and donkeys chewing and enjoying the sweet pears that fell down to the ground. It seems sitting up there, you could look at life from a different perspective. Sometimes very little is needed in order for us to look at the world with brighter, more clear eyes.
Letting my animals eat from what mother nature has to offer gave me a feeling of deep satisfaction. Just as a mother watching its child swim for the first time, I felt happy since they really enjoy eating fresh fruit. And what could be more fresh than pears directly from the tree?

While meditating up on the tree I imagined myself being one of the many pears. I could visualize for a while a pear tree full of people. On each branch, instead of a family of pear I could see a family of people. And then the bigger branch included the bigger family, and so on. This way we create a whole society of pears. A tree full of people. Everyone with different shapes and forms. Some are sweeter than others. Some are more mature than others. Some grow old quickly. Some stay young for all their lives. But in the end we are not that different from each other. Just like a tree of pears, we humans are quite similar to each other. Some stick out a little bit more, some hide away behind the leaves. But we all connect somehow. We all suffer in one way or another. We all have similarities. Things to share with each other.

Once we stay on the branch with our pear family life is generally easier. It is when we fall down, become mature, that we need to take responsibility for our own lives, everything gets a bit more complicated. For some people it can be the freedom they always wished for. And for most sooner or later they create their own little family - on a new branch with other small little pears.

Sitting in a comfortable position on the tree, I was listening to the song of the balm cricket and meditating about some people that live close to me. I could see how people seem to become more and more individualistic. It almost appears that we are living in a narcissistic era. Society is hedonistic: focus is to have fun, always, in every situation.
I read that in order to develop a good self esteem you should avoid narcissistic concepts such as impatience, constant acknowledgment, focusing on yourself and your own goals, stay away from negative feedback, comparing with others, and fixate with your own appearance.

A healthy self esteem should be based upon letting go of your own self, your own ego. Dedicate yourself to others and their needs, achieve vision that are not only about yourself,  reward effort and learning plus having an immense patience. At the moment when I was sitting up on the tree shaking the tree so that the pears fell down to the ground, these feelings appeared. I believe that many having babies can have the same feeling - when you dedicate yourself to the baby you feel better.

Part of my meditation was also about acceptance. I am reading a book on the subject, which makes me contemplate. It is not easy to accept a lot of things in life. I often realize I try to avoid thinking things or feeling in certain ways. But my book says I should not try to avoid it. It says I shall just open up the doors to my inner self, let the thoughts be there, let the feelings come and go. Just as clouds on the sky. Not try to change them or influence them. Just let them be. Thoughts and feelings are just that. They are not real as long as you do not act them out. If you manage to see them as human constructions, not as a copy of reality, you can more easily invite them in, let them come and go, not keep them, and not change them. Just accept them.

In many Buddhist contries, and also in ancient China, you don´t use the expression "I am sad", "I am happy" or "I am angry". You would say "There is a sadness", "There is a hapiness", or "There is angriness". You are not your thoughts and feelings. Your thoughts and feelings just live inside you for a little while. And you can choose which feelings and which thoughts feel good to live with inside of you. Thoughts that are constructive for you in some way.
Just as waves in the sea, both positive and negative feelings come, culminate and fade out. How many times do we not wish to stop, change or inhibit the uncomfortable feelings? Sometimes it works, but most of the time not. What we can do is to "surf" on the feelings just like a pelican surf the Pacific ocean waves - to have them and to be in them - but without acting upon them or lie floating upon them.

There is so much suffering in this world. We can choose to not suffer. If we accept more what happens in our life, in ourselves, all around us. The things that happen around us may not create suffering just because it happens. It is the way we look upon them that create the suffering.
Next time you feel anxious, you should try to sit up in a pear tree, see the world from a different point of view and try to immagine being a small green pear. Sweet and innocent. Just existing.

the importance of speech for our well-being

Your thoughts create your speech, your speech create communication, your communication create reactions, reactions creates relations, relations is the mirror of your well-being.
                                                                   Universal Education for Compassion and Wisdom


Have you ever wondered about how speech and languages are important for us human beings?

The unique with us humans is suicide. Suicide is an action that no other living creature on this planet committs. How come? What distinguishes us from other life?

The answer could be the speech. Humans can speak and communicate in a way that no other creature is able to. Speech have enormous cultural and biological advantages, but also psychological costs. Speech in a wider sense (images, thoughts, writing, singing etc), is an efficient help to pass culture in all its forms. Let us not forget our capacity of quickly communicating vital information.

We can connect through reflecting and sharing information about our inner self. This way we can strengthen our community. But speech can also cause trouble. It can even cause pain.

Speech is an abstract phenomenon which enables us to interpret and misinterpret each other. Negative feelings are often associated to neutral verbal activities - words. Word have power. When you think or say a word, you are starting a series of activities. Words create images, feelings, physical sensations and actions. Plus, words have the power to create pervasive basic perceptions about ourselves if you allow them to exist in our conscious for too long. If you tell yourself: "I am worthless and ugly" five hundred times a day - how will you feel like in the evening? What will you do?

Words are not objective, true or even real. But they still have the power to create suffering. An experiment to test that would only be possible on a human being. A stately lion or a hot-tempered ant do not have the capacity to comprehend words such as useless and ugly. None the less say those or communicate those words to others. The consequence: the ant will continue struggling, maybe suffering, maybe happy. At least, she will not feel ashamed or bad about herself.

The words also have the power to affect us positively and functionally. We have, luckily, also the capacity to sometimes think good, helpful and happy thoughts or thoughts which are neutral and realistic. The problem for us are knowing which ones are good to socialize with. Which ones should we let affect us?

The negative thoughts have a tendency to dominate many peoples minds, creating unpleasant pain, which worsen their lives. We need some sort of mental discipline and training in order to identify and socialize with the helpful, realistic and happy thoughts, knowing that they, as well as the dark and negative, are just that - thoughts! With other words: words as constructions.

What is interesting about culture and speech, is moreover how languages can form our minds and behaviour.
Scientists say that in these days, the overlapping of different cultures are creating a new kind of human being: Homo Biculturalis.

Luigi Anolli, professor of psychology at the University of Bicocca, in Milan states that "During the study of Chinese Unviersity students in American campuses we discovered that these youngsters have a mind capable of moving with ease not only from one language to another, but also between different value systems. They are individul and hedonistic with their American friends, but respectful and modest with their Chinese counterparts".

We are not talking about schizofrenia or hypocrisy here: the fact is that their minds are really capable of functioning in two different ways without contradiction. Images obtained through magnetic resonance prove it: when the students are induced to feel American, they elaborate concepts such as "mother", "myself" and "another person", in different parts of the brain. When they are induced to feel Chinese the same concepts overlap in the same area of the brain.

Biculturalism which alter the architecture of the brain is the theme of the book of professor Anolli. "To have a mind equipped with many different cultural "tool boxes" will be crucial to move around in an increasingly interconnected world. It might become such an important factor for success that, in the long run, it could reveal itself as a reproductive advantage. In the human gene pool these brain characteristics will spread",

What differentiates the impact on the human mind when humans of today mix - in respect of before - is the social and technological conditions. For instance Italian immigrants in the United States first created a half-cast culture, then progressively, mixed in the melting pot. Today, cultural identities are stronger and contacts with mother homeland through travels and internet are intense and continuing.

"Individuals that grow up in between two cultures do not wish to be assimilated with one or the other. They rather wish to be a bridge between these", Agnolli says. "This gives them an extraordinary advantage, both as mental openness and professional possibilities. They are precious persons, that each country and region should value highly".