The old angsana tree

How old does an angsana tree live? Nobody really knows. Someone said, they live to a hundred. Some say they live to a hundred and twenty. Perhaps. Some say they live to seventy. Well they live such short lives because of the high value of the wood, and people chop them down before they mature spiritually.

However, unheard by most people, there were angsana trees that had been accounted to have existed for generations beyond generations. That after a few generations, when the jungle reclaimed the land, a villager who returned to the ruins of his great-great grandfather's house found the tree which his great-great grandfather had accounted to his grandfather to have been an old, very old, angsana tree. How old was his great-great grandfather's angsana tree then? Nobody knew. Of course, the man's compatriots responded that the original tree had probably died and its subsequent seeds grew in its place. Perhaps, but the villager chose to believe that the angsana tree that he found was the original centuries old tree.

The angsana tree is a benevolent tree. It gives lives to the plants and creepers growing around it. Of course, modern science tells us that is because of the leguminous properties of the roots of an angsana tree.

The angsana tree is a benevolent tree. Dhammaputeri recounts an incident when she was five. It was late in the evening, but she had to look for her grandpa's goat. As she dragged the stubborn goat back, she saw passing shadows and heard bristling sounds. She cried but her frightened voice went dry. She ran under the angsana tree with her grandpa's goat. The shadow simply rushed about at the periphery of the foliage of the tree. She could see that the swirling shadows were attempting to get to her but it was as though an invisible wall was around the tree. The shadows tried hard as they could but failed to get to Dhammaputeri.

She fell asleep under the protection of her grandpa's angsana tree with the goat. When she awoke the next morning, she told her grandpa about the incident. He was not surprised but was thankful that his granddaughter was safe. In response, her uncle brought some of his Quran fragments and stood under the tree to chant a few verses at the tree.