There Is No Tree

There Is No Tree

To start…

Light hits the retina (a light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye), special cells called photoreceptors turn the light into electrical signals. These electrical signals travel from the retina through the optic nerve to the brain. Then the brain turns the signals it received into an image.

This image is conjured and cut out from the myriad of colours and shapes into a pattern that it locks onto. A shape.

This shape is associated with information previously stored in the brain from the past. Likely when you were a child and someone pointed to that mass of colours, drew your attention to that shape and then labelled that shape as a “tree”.

So tree is a referent to patterns of light energy interpreted by your brain but there is no tree aside from the label and the information that you hold within your mind that came from the past.

Even if you take a tree as a tree what is a tree?

Is it the shape?
Is it the bark?
The branches?
The leaves?
The root?
The fact that it rises from the ground and reaches for the sky?

Where is the tree aside from these separate parts?

And what about this tree that makes it inherently existing independent of the world around it that makes you separate it out?

If we take away the earth is there still a tree?
If we take away the rain is there still a tree?
If we take away the sun?
If we take away time?
If we take away even your conscious recognition of the tree do we even have a tree?

Aside from all of the separate things is there really a tree?

So where is this tree?

If we chop the tree into tiny pieces is that still a tree?

We take those pieces and put them in a fire and the fire burns the branches to ash can you point at the ash and still say tree? Is the ash now the tree?

Tree is just a label for a series of things, elements, including, information, time, earth, water, temperature, sun, conscious perception that is merely information processed from the brain from light rays that are bouncing through boundlessness…

So yes we see a tree.

But there’s no tree there.