The outer garden being an image of the inner, a spiritual garden, the main thing for the human plant is the gardener. Psalm 1 takes the human in terms of seed, root, bough, branch, bud, blossom and harvest. There are also spiritual mountains, rivers, sky and heavens.
Spiritual Sky
This difficulty with the physical, as much as its corporeality in this life, is that afterlife assumes there is life apart from the body, sometimes called the resurrection of the body. The sign that the dead live is their reanimation when their bodies rise. Death is equated with dust and sleep two 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.
If we say that herbs, humans, flowers, trees inhabit spiritual ground and we are all the time bodies also physical, then what is spiritual ground besides contradiction?
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 posit themselves in the metaphor of law in Psalm 1, but also
involve the heavens. Astronomical and botanical together literally
intend Heaven as a speech of inner terrain, more than a phrase, a whole
statute. Celestial plant or terrestrial star? Sun and moon are examples
of the rhetoric of this speech the righteous meditate, but not by
reading words on a page, seeing and feeling everywhere in a universal
natural drama God's handiwork. The human existence within these natural
forces meditates a worship not made with human hands, a law that
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). The more obvious aspects of Psalm 1 are paired with this one
overriding notion that involves an entirely new species that grows in
the human according to natural and botanical principles. Human
photosynthesis makes a botanical humanity.
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 hold in common 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, but the herb, being luminous, is a battery of light. Later in Isaiah 26.19f, the feminine of ‘owr is ‘owrah, or “herb-light,” that is, further brightness in the plant, or 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 mostly don’t have empirical detail.
Viewing the effects together, the Garden is human; trees inhabit the human, we do not inhabit trees. Indeed who knows 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 outside. Psalm 1 says, "he shall be like a tree," but he is a tree in this domain where all properties of vegetative growth apply to the maturation of being. Old and young trees describe the human spirit in their slowness, saplings
Time bent with age, the gnarled tree
increased the girth, made rough the skin.
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) is not words precisely, but the speaking
of it is. The thought that we might compass this in words is
itself a great faith. That law of Psalm 1 brings before us the meditation that from youth we
learn to feel in the greatness of its expression.increased the girth, made rough the skin.
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! There's no use pretending the physical is the spiritual. The spiritual however has physical consequences. People may think that their identity is physical, which has spiritual consequences.
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.
"...you many hence infer
Your resurrection if you but recall
In what way human flesh was made the day
That both of our first parents were created." Paradiso, vii, 145f
--Science has swallowed modern so the cure for all ills is said to be more math and science. To compete with China and India science would swallow whatever is left. The voracious appetite of previous centuries is surprisingly unglutted. It has made a third of the population morbidly obese. Science has swallowed but appetite grows. The tiger of ignorance makes Bullinger obsolete who said that the universe was created in Virgo, the time of Rosh Hashanah, the new year. What import that the universe is created in Virgo? Is it not obvious Virgo was created after the universe? Did Psalm 1 come first, and after it Psalm 2? Rosh Hashanah shows how the issue of delight and wonder may meditate in the law of the Lord day and night.
All this and not is said and not said in Psalm 1. The wonder of biblical background narration. Read Erich Auerbach in "Odysseus' Scar." Talk about a seed! Nurtured and grown it is the salvation of the world.
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