Killing!
When you fell a tree, what do you kill?
It seems to me that a tree is not just one living creature, but billions. Thus for me the killing of a single tree is like the killing of a billion creatures dependent on that tree to live.
We think of tree leaves as part of a tree and so they are, but each leaf has it's own individuality and life and death process. Each leaf is a living system dependent on a larger system which is the tree.
The seeds that create leaves are not automatic. They individually need to be warmed, watered and fed by the tree that sustains them. There are billions and billions of creations we call leaves. Each leaf has it's own birth, life, and death.
Have you ever asked yourself whether after a leaf dies, it comes back to life again as the same or a new leaf? What form of awareness does such a simple creation have? Or is it too simple to have any awareness at all? It must have something that we would think of as primitive awareness or it would not develop. Is it water that gives it that awareness? Or light?
That question may seem trivial to you, but are you sure it is not trivial to you. What if your reoccurance is like the seed that produces a leaf and each leaf is like a life. Does the leaf of 2009 bear any common relationship with the leaf of 2008, or are they completely different leaves/ lives? What is the memory and full experience of the leaf? When it dies, does it die each season, or does it die only when the tree dies? What dies?
What one dimensional experience constitutes the life of a leaf?