Life is a never ending jewel ...passed on and on ...

In reading tales like this, it might be helpful to envision the classic image of waves and the sea ... each sentient being much like waves rolling up tall and fading away, old wave rolling into new, old waves seemingly gone and new wave born ... yet each wholly the sea all along ... every wave, those of the past and present, each just the present then and the present now ... one wave giving birth to its successors, yet really one long rolling on and on and on ... no clear border where one ends and the next begins ... all just the whirling twirling living sea rolling on ...

Something like that.

Or, one might think of leaves on a tree ... leaves coming and going, but each leaf just the tree all along ... each leaf seemingly separate and independent, but each just the tree through and through ... each just connected to the branching others, each just a single expression of the tree, each wholly the tree itself and never truly independent ... each leaf never truly leaving ... leaves come and go but the tree remains season upon season ...

... treeleaves (like you and me. Yes, that is the origin of this place's name).

Whether one believes in a literal one-to-one rebirth or not, almost all Buddhists can agree on some image of constant, all-interbeingly, inter-happening rebirth as the above, "birth and death" just one way to look at events, not the whole picture.

Cook from 137
Hixon from 124