The idea of “Selective Attention” was demonstrated in 1999 by two professors at Harvard University, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simon, who performed an experiment in which three people in white shirts tossed a basketball to each other. At the same time three other people in black shirts did the same thing. This action was all filmed and shown to a group of students who were asked to watch the film and simultaneously to count the number of times the people in the white shirts passed the ball back and forth to each other. Following the film, the students were asked to report that number. After the students reported their findings, they were then asked how many of them saw the gorilla. The gorilla? Yes. A person in a gorilla costume entered the scene in the film for nine seconds, walked amongst the players and beat its chest, then walked out. Half the students did not see the gorilla. Whatever their reason for not seeing the gorilla, the students demonstrate a clear example of denial and ignoring. Like the students, some of us see the ongoing destruction of our forests, some simply don’t see it and some willfully ignore the situation. And as the Dalai Lama says, “Ignorance is the cause of suffering.” By August of this Tiger Year 199 wildfires raged into massive walls of flame devouring all in their paths – people’s homes and livestock, the animals of the forest, the magnificent trees and birds of all kinds. The…