Short story: Trees are as alive as Zen masters are too. We are all alive in life's oneness

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The great, and already old, Zen master, Revkin Zerposki, had just died and had been buried, and the monastery of which he had been the head monk, were trying to decide a successor for him. One monk looked around the papers on the last master's desk, for some clues, as to who he might have wanted to be his successor. There was one page of paper that simply said, my successor should be the one that can answer this koan with the best answer. And then he had written this koan. "When a tree dies, which heaven does it go to?" This question seemed rather nonsensical to all, and sundry, in the monastery, but they worked on it for a possible answer, anyway. They could not come up with any good answer, until a passing student from another monastery, simply said: "It goes to Tree Heaven, of course, as we all go to our own Heaven, or Hell, depending on our own life, just lived." He then explained his answer a bit more: "Each afterlife is different, and each person goes to the one they have created from their just-completed life, at first, so they can rest up there, before moving across to a common Heaven, with others." "Rest, and peace, and contemplation, about the last just completed life, is necessary then for each soul." This student then became the new head, as the other students asked him to stay on, and be the replacement for their old just departed master. Why does anything die? To become more of itself alive. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com The life of a dead tree goes back into life.