Realizing Genjo-koan

When I walked on North Pack Monadnock I came upon this hollow tree whose "gate" was about my size. At the very moment I saw it this thought, although I hesitate to call it a thought, came up, "It can see and step right through me." In that split second I came to understand on a deeper level the following from 12th century zen master Eihi Dogen's Genjo-Koan or Actualizing the Fundamental Point:

"To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening." 

And this too:

"To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly."

Language is often an inadequate tool in relating experience. I offer a short poem by Gary Snyder that might come close:

As the crickets’ soft autumn hum 

is to us 

so are we to the trees

as are they

 to the rocks and the hills.