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Hello friends,
I am on the train going further South and now I have some breathing time. I got muscle fatigue in the rib cage due to the constant stress of biking long distances. It’s quite painful. Parked the bike for a month. I think one should accept that age is catching up!
I am trying to reorient what we do here at the Vrikshalaya centre and I have written some notes.
All your comments are welcome. Please don’t hesitate to email me!
Our Aspiration
We envision a world in which people are supported by safe and compassionate environments that truly walk the talk. We support one another in personal transformation, becoming effective community members and mindful fellow human beings, extending care to all that we inhabit on Earth in harmonious ways.
In our experience, mindful immersion in nature helps open pathways to deeper awareness of interdependence and interconnectedness. It can lead to an expanded consciousness of interbeing, as described by the Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh, or to a deeper understanding of the intrinsic value of all life, articulated within the Deep Ecology movement initiated by the Norwegian ecologist Arne Naess.
The Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Vrikshavandana:
O Tree, you are the adi-prana (the first original breath).
You were the first to hear the call of the sun
and to liberate life from the prison-house of the rock.
You represent the first awakening of consciousness.
You brought to the earth beauty and peace.
Before you the earth was speechless;
you filled her breath with music.
This understanding may be articulated in many languages, expressed in countless forms, and named in different ways. Yet its essence remains the same, and it can only be rekindled through sincere efforts to look within.
A nourishing external environment helps, and the shared energy of fellow seekers strengthens inner motivation. Vrikshalaya, and we ourselves, wish to be part of this work with full sincerity.
– Ajay Rastogi
Our friend Raj Supe replied :
“Wonderful aspiration!
In the Vedic vision, the vṛkṣa is not scenery but presence. It stands as a quiet witness to ṛta, the cosmic order, binding earth, mid-space, and heaven in a single living form. With roots sunk deep into darkness and branches opening toward light, the tree embodies continuity across realms. The seers did not see nature as inert matter but as sat-cit-prāṇa, being, awareness, and life-breath expressed silently. Thus the forest was not wilderness but order, a place where dharma stood without declaration.
Scripture speaks of the tree as shared ground of existence. Samānaṃ vṛkṣaṃ pariṣasvajāte, two birds resting on the same tree, suggests body and soul, jīva and Īśvara, dwelling together in one field of life. Elsewhere, the eternal aśvattha is described as ūrdhva-mūla avāk-śākhaḥ, roots above and branches below, declaring that what we see is nourished by what we do not. The tree thus becomes a metaphysical diagram, visible life sustained by the invisible.
The Vedas also recognize the tree as a living devatā. Vanaspate namaḥ is not poetic excess but acknowledgment. Before a tree is cut, it is addressed; before wood enters the yajña, it is entreated. Fire itself is said to dwell in wood, agnir vṛkṣe vasati, making the tree the womb of sacrifice. In this way, the vṛkṣa is not outside ritual; it is yajña made flesh.
Ethically, the tree teaches without speech. It bears fruit for others, offers shade while standing in heat, and asks nothing in return. Paropakārāya phalanti vṛkṣāḥ, trees exist for the good of others, became a moral axiom long before it became a proverb. To harm a fruit-bearing tree was treated as a fault requiring atonement, not because of sentiment, but because life itself was diminished thereby. Protection of trees was protection of prāṇa.
Civilisation itself seems to grow out of shade. Before temples rose, there was gathering beneath trees; before scripture was housed, it was heard in forests. The āśrama, the sabhā, the place of teaching and counsel, each found its first form under spreading branches. The vṛkṣa was the earliest pillar, the first altar, the most ancient refuge, teaching patience in an age that had not yet learned haste.
To extol the tree, then, is not to romanticise nature but to remember a forgotten grammar of life. The vṛkṣa stands where heaven touches earth, where silence sustains speech, where giving does not impoverish. In its long stillness lies a living scripture, one that reminds us that to be rooted is not to be stagnant, and to rise is possible only when one is deeply, humbly grounded.
A drop that falls becomes a stream
and in its flow I hear your dream.
You tell me it has no fixed name
yet it shapes the roots, it fuels the flame.
If it can live in tree or man
or flower, or moss on stone’s rough span,
why must it ask which form is true
when every form is born anew?
Your words remind me: change is breath,
existence laughs at birth and death.
A drop is ocean, seed, and sky,
to vanish is to multiply.
So let the flood of being sing,
its fragrance, thought, and colours bring.
And in that stream where all dissolve,
the self and world as one evolve.
jai guru, warm wishes & prayers
from the banks of holy Ganga
~ Kinkar VishwaShreyAnanda (Raj Supe)”
