We see herbs, trees, humans, flowers inhabit a spiritual landscape in the Psalms, conclude they grow in a spiritual ground. But what is spiritual ground besides a contradiction, a spiritual landscape inhabited by bodies also physical? Viewing these effects together, the garden is human, trees, herbs and flowers inhabit our spirit, we do not inhabit theirs. Indeed we do not know if trees, herbs and flowers have an inner world. The tree of life, the knowledge of good and evil, the trees of the garden are within the human even while they are also outside. Psalm 1 says, "he shall be like a tree," but he is a tree in this domain. All the properties of vegetative growth apply to the maturation of inner being. Old and young trees describe human spiritual growth, especially in slowness. Saplings indeed.
Time bent with age the gnarled tree,
increased the girth, made rough the skin.
Spiritual Sky
The outer garden in fact is an image of the inner (or the other way round), and if it is a spiritual garden, there are also spiritual mountains and rivers, spiritual sky and heavens. The main thing for the human plant is the gardener. Psalm 1 views the human relation to God in terms of seed, root, bough, branch, blossom, bud and harvest.
This difficulty with this physical body however, as much as its corporeality in this life, is the afterlife that assumes there is life apart from the body, sometimes called the resurrection (of the body). The sign that these dead live is their reanimation when their bodies rise. Death is equated with dust and sleep two different ways; they dwelt in the dust who were buried in it, but they were also made of it. “Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.” (Isaiah 26.19f). Implicit buried seeds are wakened by rain (dew). Their waking enlivens the dust. Earth gives birth.
We therefore want to know more about the dew, which seems a continuation of Isaiah 18.4: “for so the LORD said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, like a cloud of dew in the heat of the harvest.” The resurrection of the body has a likeness to this herb, both in common with the broadcast of light that pseudo-botanist Erasmus Darwin saw in flashes from the marigold and in the idea implicit in ‘eseb, the word for herb bearing seed of Genesis 1.29 of a glistening green, a reflective dewy surface. That implication of glistening increases in the ‘owr of Isaiah 18.4 which connotes generation of light, not by reflection but, a being made luminous, set on fire. "I will take my rest" is full of light. This rest produces the essence of oil in the herb. The herb, being luminous, is a battery of the divine. Later in Isaiah 26.19f, the feminine of ‘owr is ‘owrah, or “herb-light,” that is, further brightness in the plant, seeing the luminescence of resurrected bodies revived by the new implanted breath. They are luminous because resurrected. That dew of the herb-light is a supernal revival of decayed bodies, a new Adam coming from dust by Breath (Genesis 2.4). Dew, breath, mist, wind and water resuscitate. The dew that waters the dead, like the dew of the herbs, is light, and so “the earth shall cast out her dead.” Good metaphors are so convincing. We don’t have any empirical detail.
The outer garden in fact is an image of the inner (or the other way round), and if it is a spiritual garden, there are also spiritual mountains and rivers, spiritual sky and heavens. The main thing for the human plant is the gardener. Psalm 1 views the human relation to God in terms of seed, root, bough, branch, blossom, bud and harvest.
This difficulty with this physical body however, as much as its corporeality in this life, is the afterlife that assumes there is life apart from the body, sometimes called the resurrection (of the body). The sign that these dead live is their reanimation when their bodies rise. Death is equated with dust and sleep two different ways; they dwelt in the dust who were buried in it, but they were also made of it. “Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.” (Isaiah 26.19f). Implicit buried seeds are wakened by rain (dew). Their waking enlivens the dust. Earth gives birth.
We therefore want to know more about the dew, which seems a continuation of Isaiah 18.4: “for so the LORD said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, like a cloud of dew in the heat of the harvest.” The resurrection of the body has a likeness to this herb, both in common with the broadcast of light that pseudo-botanist Erasmus Darwin saw in flashes from the marigold and in the idea implicit in ‘eseb, the word for herb bearing seed of Genesis 1.29 of a glistening green, a reflective dewy surface. That implication of glistening increases in the ‘owr of Isaiah 18.4 which connotes generation of light, not by reflection but, a being made luminous, set on fire. "I will take my rest" is full of light. This rest produces the essence of oil in the herb. The herb, being luminous, is a battery of the divine. Later in Isaiah 26.19f, the feminine of ‘owr is ‘owrah, or “herb-light,” that is, further brightness in the plant, seeing the luminescence of resurrected bodies revived by the new implanted breath. They are luminous because resurrected. That dew of the herb-light is a supernal revival of decayed bodies, a new Adam coming from dust by Breath (Genesis 2.4). Dew, breath, mist, wind and water resuscitate. The dew that waters the dead, like the dew of the herbs, is light, and so “the earth shall cast out her dead.” Good metaphors are so convincing. We don’t have any empirical detail.
Human Photosynthesis
It seems necessary to say all this in order to establish that human photosynthesis occurs by the "rivers of water" in Psalm 1. Human photosynthesis is a means of understanding the human psycho-spiritual growth that is righteousness. Botanical cycles so posit themselves in the metaphor of the law in Psalm 1, but also involve the heavens. Astronomical and botanical together literally intend Heaven as a speech of this inner terrain, more than a phrase, a statute. Celestial plant or terrestrial star? Sun and moon are examples of the rhetoric of this speech that the righteous meditate, but they are not reading words on a page but seeing and feeling everywhere in the universal natural drama God's handiwork. The human existence within these natural forces meditates a worship not made with human hands, which law insists everywhere in heaven and earth that it is revealed in natural processes. "He shall come down like rain upon new mown grass" (Ps. 72.6). It's a little hard to exclaim the more obvious aspects of Psalm 1 when they are paired with this one overriding notion that involves an entirely new species that grows inside the human according to natural and botanical principles. So human photosynthesis is a botanical humanity.
Corporeality
Psalm 1 introduces this new species where our interest is still in the central image of the righteous man. It is ourselves to be sure, not an animal, to compare a tiger eating with an ear of corn growing. Chuang Tzu says of the tiger, "they do not dare to supply them with living creatures, because of the rage which their killing of them will excite" (216). So he warns that "people are at first sincere, but always end with becoming rude" (213)..."the body seated and the mind galloping abroad" (210). It is why he recommends "fasting of the mind" (209), because "virtue is dissipated in the pursuit of the name for it" (204). The point of this is that the word for virtue and the reputation for it are not virtuous. To bring us back to the corporeality of the human, these are due to the animal spirit, the instant flare of emotion, the immediate demand for fulfillment. It could be tiger, mantis or horse, or monkey tied to a stick (216), but Chuang Tzu says, "give over approaching men with the lessons of your virtue" (221). He doesn't say be a corn of wheat and go out to your patch and die, but wait for the tassel, the ear to form in yourself. Compared to the tiger's instant rage of need it is like an age to an instant. The tree grows a little but it lasts. This new species recognizes that the spiritual grows within. First the seed, then the sprout, then the transplant, then the growth, necessary pruning, increased girth, nests of birds, insects, flower, fruit and limbs extending over.
Old Age
His leaf also shall not wither. Chuang Tzu, even if a rough contemporary of David, would at first seem not to have much in common with the Psalms, except for the tree that in both portrays human existence entire. He shall be as a tree planted by rivers of water, says David, but Chuang Tzu really only gets cooking about the age of 70. Long life is his central concern, always distinguishing the immature dove of youth from the discernment of the spiritual man. This man of age, who feels the tides wash in and out, may also feel awash in uselessness, his biological purpose being gone, but this is the great Chou meditation, that none are so developed as in I, iv (James Legge, II, 217f) as the great oak tree that is "good for nothing and hence it is that it has attained to so great an age." Whether from deformity or crookedness the question is, "how is that you a useless man know all this about me a useless tree" (218)? That exactly addresses both the tree of the Psalm and the feeling of the discarded man abandoned after he lived his life to support others.
Of course to be used is to needed, and uselessness would be an anxiety for it would not be famous or to be accepted by the schools. Chuang Tzu holds all this acceptance as a negative, transparently artificial. Real human relations are the "unavoidable obligations, this is the highest object for you to pursue; what else can you do to fulfill the charge (of your father and ruler). The best thing you can do is to be prepared to sacrifice your life; and this is the most difficult thing to do" (214). The mature man beset with obstacles within and without needs to find a joy of life to counter the pain of age, ague, bone loss, dissolving muscle and failing emotion, being no longer a hero in his own eye. Chuang Tzu says, good enough, go on from there. This is the end of the corporeal. If that one wants a hope they may read Psalm 1.
These propositions get exposed in the homilies, whole books on each, none greater than those considering meditation in the law of the Lord.
Blessed is the man.
His delight is in the law of the Lord.
He meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water.
He brings forth fruit in his season.
His leaf will not wither.
Whatever he does will prosper.
The tree, the river, the leaf, the law, the Lord, the man, book upon book, the pages of the law are not for turning; it is the whole natural world itself. One stays up late to view it, but whether awake or asleep never stops contemplating the wonder. This is what Chuang Tzu continually does. The man has a purpose, a reason for being. It is to delight. When he takes to bed, not needing as much sleep, he meditates, he dreams, he listens and hears, he believes and walks, his constant companion, as though his perception were cleansed and he saw everything as it is, infinite and holy (to borrow a phrase). The thought that we might compass this in words is itself a great faith. That law is not words precisely, but the speaking of it is. Psalm 1 brings before us the meditation that from youth we learn to feel in the greatness of its expression.
If we come to contemplate that law from the commentaries of Isaac Luria, Me'am Lo'ez, Rabbi Israel Meir Hacohen, Rashi's Perush on the Torah, the Babylonian Talmud, esoteric books pile up around us in the study. There be many. Be up early. The light is on. Not to deny the written among writers. Is there another? Yes! It is the Law of the LORD!
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