"Impermanence.
Everything arises and passes away.
So don’t hold on to anything."
Antony Osler, Stoep Zen
When we walk in the mornings my dog pisses on every tree he can manage (and he
can manage quite a lot). He does it because he knows that his ownership of the tree is
impermanent. So he renews his title to it every day. But it’s not the actual tree that he
owns; it’s merely the opportunity that the tree presents – the chance to leave a promise
of his DNA there, in an instinctive bid for immortality through reproduction.
One of our favourite trees, a tree that he visited and liberally addressed every
morning, a tree that I had photographed dozens of times, was cut down. When we
came upon the empty patch of fresh earth (they had not left even the meanest stump
above ground), I was stricken. But my dog appeared to not even notice its absence; he
merely trotted along to the next tree and pissed on it instead.
Our possessions are really just an illusion, a symbol of a thing, rather than an
actual thing. A big house is a symbol of our wealth and our self-regard. An expensive,
high performance car is a symbol of our personal sexual misgivings. A carefully tended
garden is a symbol of our love. A well-equipped and warm kitchen is a symbol of our
joie de vivre.
It’s not the possessions that matter at all; it’s what they represent. We don’t die
when our car rusts away. We just get another car. And my dog just pisses on another
tree.
