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Rebecca and I were asked, a couple of years back, to give a presentation on building Stonetrees at a yoga retreat. At first some of the yogis and yoginis didn’t understand why were were going to go down to the beach to stack rocks, but soon everyone was delightfully balancing stone on stone.

You see, to build a truly amazing Stonetree, you can’t think. We asked the participants to simply stand on the beach, look about themselves, and pick up the first stone that felt ‘right’. Then repeat. Carefully, feeling the balance points and the personality of each stone, balances that seem nearly impossible can be achieved. We asked everyone not to use small ‘placer’ stones to hold rocks in place (you often see these when people are trying to build Stonetrees, and in our way of thinking this detracts from the opportunity to discover each stone’s relation to the next). Sometimes a stone is set aside because it just won’t balance, but usually, with enough play, it will find its place.

Stonetrees like this can become quite spectacular, but the more spectacular they are, the more precariously balanced they are. Sometimes a gentle breeze is enough to topple them — other times the tides or a perching bird sends them scattering back onto the beach. A few days later, there is usually no sign that Stonetrees were built.

Stonetrees remind us that all of our creations — our thoughts, our bodies, our buildings, our tools — all of these are ephemeral. We attempt, through all sorts of mind-play, to imagine immortality in one form or another, but stop for a moment and imagine a Stonetree on the shore with cement  and wire holding it up. It may last much longer, but its life — the balanced relationship of stone on stone — is gone.

Death is one of the most difficult challenges for the human mind, because our mind wants to grasp and hold on to everything. And yet the beauty of life is found in its fleeting nature, and when the Stonetree falls it becomes part of the perfect Li from which it was created. Indeed, the ‘Stonetree’ is only a particular arrangement, in the same way that we might tighten our hand into a ball and pronounce our new creation a ‘fist’. The fist, though, is just a thought — a name we put on a particular formation. In reality, there is only the hand, and even that is only a formation of something else.

Stones on the beach come into relationship with a human being, and for a moment they create something together. Then the Stonetree topples down and all the potential is returned. The waves dance among the rocks and bare feet and Stonetrees without any prejudice. Whether we like it or not, this is the reality and the beauty of living. All else is trouble we create in our minds, built out of our desire for permanence.