Animism (4): Rocks and Flowers

There’s a tendency for the modern world to think in terms of a clear difference between the animate and inanimate. The former are living and the latter are dead. There’s a clear linguistic divide.

But for many cultures and visionaries, the division is by no means so simple. Or simplistic. Take for example the Arab mystic, Ibn Arabi, who saw the world in terms of gradation…

“God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man.”

For those new to Japan, the notion of rocks as equally divine as trees is puzzling. Trees are magnificent creatures that react to their environment and grow upwards in similar manner to human beings. How can they possibly be bracketed with the physical material of an insensate rock?

Shinto, however, teaches us that all worldly substance is imbued with divinity. Paradise is here on earth, and kami inhabit rocks even more so than trees. In the mythology they even descend from heaven in rock-boats. Similarly rocks are likely to be the main features of a Japanese garden, and harnessing their power is a key to creating the dynamism that characterises the tradition.

In the passage below Eckhart Tolle discusses the spirituality of flowers, yet he begins with stone. Here the divide is not between the animate and inanimate, but between form and the formless. The focus may be on the beauty of flowers, but rocks too are part of the ongoing process of creation. As Alan Watts noted, we humans are born out of the rock of mother Earth, just as fruit is born out of a tree.

Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.”

“I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.”

“The flower of consciousness needs the mud out of which it grows.”

“Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal, and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerged, would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless.”

“When you recognize the sacredness, the beauty, the incredible stillness and dignity in which a flower or a tree exists, you add something to the flower or the tree. Through your recognition, your awareness, nature too comes to know itself. It comes to know its own beauty and sacredness through you.”

“When the mind loses its density, you become translucent, like the flower. Spirit – the formless – shines through you into the world.”

“Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really exist for them. They might say, ‘What a pretty flower,’ but that’s just a mechanical mental labeling. Because they are not still not present, they don’t truly see the flower, don’t feel it’s essence, it’s holiness-just as they don’t know themselves, don’t feel their own essence, their own holiness.”

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Previous postings: for Animism (1) on Trees, see here. For Animism (2) on a syncretic shrine, see here. For Animism (3) on Marie Kondo, see here.