Their Meaning and Importance
— by Allen Pittman
In both the texts of Gao and his student, Chang Chuen-feng, the symbol of the tree is emphasized. The tree has value, both as practical training, and as an esoteric teaching method. It’s a transcultural symbol which occurs in many religious traditions.
In some of the most ancient Central Asian traditions of Shamanism, the Evergreen tree is what one enters in meditation to commune with other beings throughout time and space (see Dr. Charles Muses’ “Shamanic Lion Path”).
In Ba Gua the tree is the center of one’s circle-walking exercise. It can also serve as a reference point for practicing tactics. This is probably how the “wooden-man” exercises common to many Chinese boxing methods evolved. A tree is particularly useful for working on techniques using the shoulders and hips, though I do not advocate striking one with the hands or feet. The Indian wrestler Gama, one of the greatest known wrestlers of all time, belted himself to a tree each morning and practiced isometric lifting. He said men were easy to lift after trying to do that!
The circle-walking exercise around the tree occupies the later third of the system of Gao. The tree is also a handy mnemonic device in Ba Gua. In Gao’s text it is the roots of the tree that are the twenty-four “Heavenly Gates” or beginners’ exercises. The trunk represents the sixty-four tactics. The branches or fruits and flowers of the tree are the “Eight Mother Palms” or “Eight Changes.”
This way of remembering is reminiscent of the schools of the Druids of Ireland who taught among the Oak groves. Father Simeon, of St. Isaac of Syria skete in Wisconsin (a Russian Orthodox Monastery) once told me of one of his teachers who had said, “Practice praying to a tree for awhile – then try God.”
Because of the dearness and importance of the trees I put below a quote from Edmund Bordeaux Szekely’s The Essene Teachings of Zarathustra,page 21. This quote is relevant to both Ba-gua and life on Earth in general.
THE CULT OF BROTHER TREE“Another very interesting cult in the Avestas is the cult of ‘Brother Tree’. According to Zoroaster, men and trees are brethren and cannot live and develop fully without one another. He asserts that the tree is the most perfect form of life in the vegetable kingdom, and that likewise man represents the highest degree of evolution attained in the animal kingdom.
The highest form of food on this planet is the product of trees-their fruits-and man, as the highest in the animal kingdom, should be nourished by such food. The symbiosis of men and trees furnishes the most harmonious environment for human health and longevity.
“A tree is the Law itself” declares the Avestas, meaning by this the life of a tree is in complete harmony with the forces and laws of nature. The metabolism of a tree is the most perfect natural manifestation of life itself. Besides yielding the most perfect food for man, trees maintain the fertility and vitality of the soil; they protect the earth from desiccation by sun and wind; they preserve the life-giving moisture of the top-soil with their periodic carpet of fallen leaves and fruit; their roots drain away any excess of humidity and thereby maintain the perfect precondition of life-a rich and healthy soil.
Several of the Avestic hymns glorify the tree as the brother of man, and according to these it is a crime to cut down a tree without planting at least two others in its place. According to the Avestas a Zoroastrian father must plant a tree at the birth of his child and again on his anniversary. When the child becomes twenty-one years old, the father must give the trees he has planted and the land they stand on to the child as his inheritance, so that he may enjoy the necessary food and land-small in extent thought this may be-which will provide the basic needs of his life. This teaching is a late survival from the ancient heliolithic tradition concerning our primitive ancestor, known as Homo Sapiens Sylvanus, who dwelt in the forests. This tradition is confirmed by the work of Darwin, Lamarck, Cuvier and other scientists of the modern age.”