The Illusion of Tree

     The tree outside my window is an illusion. This statement can be taken in one of two ways. First it may indicate that I’m having a psychotic episode wherein I’m unable to see the tree that is plainly visible to all those around me. Or it can be a statement in support of the statement “A is not A and that is why we can call it A.”
     In our language, the term tree refers to an agreed upon aggregate of factors that comprise what appears to be a solid object when processed through the human brain. When I say that the tree in the yard is a tree, I am actually saying that the object is one of other similarly formed aggregates in a category we have named “tree.” The tree I see is not The tree, and that is why I can call it A tree. Tree is simply a category of similar aggregate forms.
     From this perspective what I see in the yard is colloquially understood as a tree, one of many similar forms – Oak, Poplar, Red Wood, Cypress - within the category we designate as Tree. And this tree that I am now looking at out my kitchen window does exist, there in the yard, exactly as I see it. When I said above that the tree is an illusion. I did not mean that it does not exist. That particular tree is really there as the object which I perceive.
     However, at the same time, with a slight turn in perspective (perhaps a “turning at the seat of consciousness”), we see  with a different “eye” and realize that there is not some singular entity which constitutes our tree out there in the yard. There is in fact, only an aggregate of parts that come together as they do, to form an object which we all agree to call a tree.
     Nothing about our object changes except in our mind. What now exists in our mind’s eye is a number of other “categories of form” that are interconnected in this aggregate we designate as tree. There are “roots” which arise from the ground, “bark” and “something smooth” just underneath this rough exterior forming the “trunk” which rises vertically for several feet, and then splits into many “branches” in all shapes and sizes, wildly spreading out in all directions. Appendages called “leaves” emerge from “stems” that have sporadically arisen out of each branch along its length. And if this weren’t enough my mind begins to “see” that each of these categories of form are but aggregates of their own increasingly microscopic, constituent parts. And none of these standing alone, or separated from the whole, constitute the Tree; tree is not Tree and that is why we can call it tree, or “the name is not the thing named and that is why we can name it thus.”
     Suddenly I am pulled back to the kitchen and the window from which I once again find myself looking at the tree which I am now able to “see” in two distinct ways. I can see my tree as colloquially understood; a solid and distinct object among many in my yard.
     But there is also now an alternative view. When I use the term tree, colloquially, I run the risk of mistakenly believing that the name of the object is the object itself. It’s a subtlety that I find myself readily accepting for all material objects. In doing so however, I must suspend my apprehension of it as an aggregate of parts made up of infinitely more constituent forms, coming together to create a category. Words are like fingers pointing to the illusion of a solid substance, rather than the specific combination of uniquely arising constituent parts they are.
     But where is the tree itself within this conditioned arising of constituent parts? As such it is an illusion created by our mind and the reason we can call this category a tree, is that it is not the Tree…..but it’s beautiful isn’t it?
      Or to quote Dogen, “Dog no stone, stone no dog.”