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THE TREE OF LIFE: REVISITING OUR SHARED LEGACIES
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n one of many traditional forms of pictorial recitations, we may find the use of an image of a tree as a symbol. In a wayang (shadow puppet) tradition in Malaysia and Indonesia for example, an image of a tree called pohon hayat (tree of life) or gunungan (mountain) is used to open a shadow puppet performance. In Malaysia, the image is read as a pictorial text that signifies a traditional cosmological reading of life and its cross-dimensional universes in which myriads of beings dwell across physical, mental, emotional and spiritual domains. The central core of the pohon hayat represents vertical ascension in which humans reach higher level consciousness or domain. The radiant branching represents descend in which humans dwell in their daily lower level consciousness or domain. Ascension moves towards unity, while descend moves towards multiplicity or diversity. A journey of crossing multiple domains connotes two seemingly paradoxical directions – multiplicity and unity. Multiplicity illuminates the outward, while unity illuminates the inward. The propeller of such illumination is compassion and unconditional love.
In this cosmological reading, the essence of a sustainable living is a convergence and balance between opposites, metaphorically expressed by the notion of ascending and descending. It represents inter-connectedness between the individual self and societal others, internal and external, spiritual and wordly affairs. Artistic productions within such traditional cosmological reading have always been taken as a part of developing a sustainable cultural ‘ecosystem’. This ecosystem induces inter-connectedness and a balanced symbiosis of opposites across multi-level domains - physical, mental/emotional and spiritual. Through compassion and love, the ecosystem displays a complimentary and harmonious cross-existence between the arts and sciences, left brain and right brain, ying and yang, male and female and many more opposites. Asian artistic legacies can be traced in its rich cross-cultural heritage. Pictorial recitations or performed paintings in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Japan, Iran and India reflect