….. or Limb From Limb
The Arasa-Maram, the banyan tree, (so sacred with the Hindus, since Vishnu, during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty shade and there taught humanity philosophy and sciences) is called the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protective umbrage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils their first lessons on immortality and initiate them in the mysteries of life and death.
In Java, the banyan tree is also sacred, not least because underlying Javanese mysticism is a complex and elaborate metaphysics: “... man actively and inevitably participates in the all-encompassing unity of material and spiritual existence. The spiritual aspect is superior, more true as it were. … Harmony and unity with ultimate essence is the purpose of all life. … Nature and supernature mutually influence each other, and causality is implied in their coordination.”
A tree under which teachers and pupils sit suggests a natural bonding, the all-encompassing unity of material and spiritual existence. If a tree could hear, how wise it might be.
So, who the hell are those dim-witted souls who have chopped up a 100-year-old banyan tree in Jakarta to halt a rumor about is special powers from spreading? Presumably they are not Javanese and they certainly do not follow the pluralistic Muslim faith practised by the vast majority of the population.
Earlier, rumors had spread that cutting down the tree would bring bad luck because it was spared during a tree-felling drive to make way for a new bus lane in central Jakarta, Sarwo Handayani, head of the city’s park agency said.
She said the rumors gained strength after unidentified people left offerings at the tree’s base. Handayani dismissed the rumors of supernatural involvement as nonsense, saying officials did not fell the tree because the bus lane could be routed around it.
The sprawling tree’s branches were hacked away Sunday, leaving just its trunk. Handayani said it was too early to say if the tree will survive.
The head of the Muslim group, Zainal Arifin, admitted to attacking the banyan, saying it did so to prove that there was nothing mystical about the tree.
“Surely, no one can believe that a tree is more powerful than a human,” he said. “We did this to propagate Islam.”
Actually, I do believe that a banyan tree is more powerful than a human. After all, it gives life and does not take it. It nurtures and, as Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, said, it provides “beneficent shade.” I also can’t believe that this action is going to gain any converts to Islam, unless there are other witless twits out there who are prepared to become pitiful laughing stocks.
If this group had more balls, I’d suggest that an appropriate punishment would be to tear them limb from limb, but that’s too flippant.
Nah, let them be laughed at whilst they’re planting replacement trees as part of their community service in Jakarta’s Parks Department, seeing as there really is one.