The doorway to fundamental knowledge is not books
A number of contributors have recently suggested that plants are not intelligent and cannot suffer because they don’t have brains or nervous systems.
However, on further examination we can see that the mystical insight which has for thousands of years consistently revealed the universal sentience of all life is now being corroborated by science.
A recent spate of studies is proving that plants have volition, show altruism and understand kinship much like many animal species. All this without a nervous system, which illustrates how profoundly scientific materialism and our anthropocentrism shuts us off from the wondrous interconnectedness of life and confines us to a mechanical world of insensitivity towards existence.
To spend a few hours among the great forest trees is to be granted a kind of peace the civilised world has long forgotten. I suggest those who resort to the dictionaries for understanding also spend time sitting silently in contemplation under a tree in a quiet spot. What might be revealed there may be far more convincing than any written or conventionally defined wisdom. And I dare say even Mr Bahrt might discover humour and peace of mind in doing so.
Michael Setter
Chon Buri
