zen to be

test

2010-11-24T10:42:00.002-03:00

it reaches beyond life

2010-03-05T13:43:00.007-03:00

I think music is what language once aspired to be. Music allows us to face God on our own terms because it reaches beyond life.

Love Begins in Winter, Simon Van Booy

if you'd like to learn more about this author, please check:
http://simonvanbooy.com/

picture above from Max Richter's site on his composition, 24 Postcards in Full Colour. To listen to this wonderful music, please refer to:
http://www.24postcards.co.uk/

That's what I'm reading, that's what I'm listening to, that's what nourishes me.

on interbeing

2009-12-01T13:11:00.000-03:00

the Buddha in a cup of tea

2009-11-25T12:22:00.002-03:00

Too worldly for a monastery,
I find Buddha in a cup of tea:
Up with the sunrise,
I sit alone in my cabin,
Mind washed by simmering water
Sound, like wind in the pines.
This is my solitary quest,
Buddha under the Bodhi Tree
Meditated for seven days,
Until a beautiful sunrise
Made him give up
The futility of revealing
What was never hidden.
I prefer a simple cup of tea,
Seven minutes to boil water,
Much easier than seven days.
Complete, unexcelled Enlightenment:
Of course, only if
You are paying attention!

The Four Noble Truths
First, suffering exists:
Why else would we drink tea?
A daily taste of paradise in the everyday.
Second truth: suffering caused by tanha--
“Self-centeredness, grasping, and greed;”
Drink tea and be ego-free;
Self dissolves in service to the holy leaf;
Guests arrive and Buddha meets Buddha.
Third truth: suffering can cease
The tea cup is a raft between
Nirvana and Samsara,
Neither shore more holy than the other.
Fourth truth: there is a way to end suffering,
The Noble Eightfold Path:
Right view: the beautiful leaves, the color of the brew.
Right intention: prepare a delicious cup and enjoy.
Right speech: no yesterday or tomorrow in the tearoom.
Right conduct: spontaneous morality needs no rules.
Right livelihood: honest, forthright, a good example.
Right effort: delight in details: gong fu cha!
Right mindfulness: care for another cup?
Right concentration: nothing but tea, yet tea includes all.

All of this called
The Middle Way,
No extremes:
Neither asceticism nor hedonism
Greedy people make insipid tea.
The overly patient brew it
Too dark and bitter.

Elaborating on obvious truths
Tea Buddha also teaches
Anatta—no self,
How can I know I,
Since I’m the one doing the knowing?
I am not I, and tea is not tea!
And anicca, impermanence,
The same guests, like the same moment
Never return—one time, one meeting.
Tea changes: white, green, oolong, red, pu erh.
Today’s Long Jing is different from yesterday’s.
And tathata—suchness, the beingness of Tea:
What is tea? Just this, just this, just this…

Kenneth S. Cohen

to read more please check:
http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/236-buddhist-geeks/episodes/52961-buddha-cup

reflections

2009-10-23T15:52:00.001-03:00

Objects of mind
Subject of mind
Reflections on the surface of water
Different, not the same
Yet who can separate them?

Gary Palen

the preciousness of every single moment

2009-10-15T10:30:00.002-03:00

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs, and the tigers are getting closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump pf grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it into her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.

Tiger above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life, it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of life.

Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape (Shambala Publications, Boston/London, 2001)

someday, he'll come along

2009-10-07T16:03:00.003-03:00

it's Mr. Yorke's birthday today.

thanks for all the beauty, shared with so much generosity over the years.

thank you for being on this planet.

feel all the love and gratitude from so many people you've been inspiring all along.

Happy Continuation!

koan

2009-09-27T07:58:00.003-03:00

No one at home – yet no vacancy!

Soen Nakagawa

Endless Vow – The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa (Shambala Publications, Boston/London, 1996)

what am I doing?

2009-09-23T08:59:00.003-03:00

Do you think I know what I’m doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it’s writing,
Or the ball can guess where it’s going next.

Rumi

Open Secret: Versions of Rumi

Que Será, Será - Plum Village version

2009-09-16T09:02:00.004-03:00

When I was just a little girl,
I asked my mother what will I be?
Will I be pretty?
Will I be rich?
This’s what she said to me:

Que Será, Será
Whatever will be, will be?
The future’s not ours to see
Que Sera, Sera,
What’s will be, will be.

When I was just a novice monk
I asked my teacher, what will I be?
Will I be enlighten?
Will I be free?
This’s what Thay said to me:

Que Será, Será,
What ever will be, will be?
The Sangha will let you know,
Within ten years or so.

When I was just a novice nun
I tried my best to be near Thay
But everybody did the same thing,
How could I be near to Thay

Sit next to me my child,
Every Thursday at lunch,
Love your brothers and yours sisters,
You’re always close to me.

I’ve been a nun for 5 years now,
I ask my teacher, where is my (Dharma) Lamp?
I’ve tried my best, done everything.
Will I get it this time?

Sit, stand, talk and walk,
Do everything in mindfulness
And have a pleasant smile
The light will shine from there.

I’ve been a monk for 10 years now
I ask my teacher, what should I do?
Should I go out?
Have a temple of my own,

Que Será, Será,
Whatever will be, will be.
Be a river my child
Don’t be a drop of water.

Photo: Plum Village Novice Brothers and Sisters during Winter Retreat 2008.

http://www.plumvillage.org/

a child learns to stand

2009-09-04T02:24:00.002-03:00

In spite of the scientific knowledge that is steadily growing, the people of the world are restless and racked with fear and discontent. They are intoxicated with the desire to gain fame, wealth, power and to gratify the senses. To this troubled world still seething with hate, distrust, selfish desire and violence, most timely is the Buddha's Message of love and understanding, the Noble Eightfold Path, leading to the realization of Nibbana. A mere knowledge of the Path, however complete, will not do. In this case, our function is to follow it and keep to it.

The path is indeed difficult, but if we, with constant heedfulness, and complete awareness, walk it watching our steps, we will one day reach our destination. A child learns to stand and walk gradually and with difficulty. So too have all great ones moved from stage to stage through repeated failure to final success. It is a Path leading to the realization of Ultimate Reality, to complete freedom, happiness and peace through moral, spiritual and intellectual perfection.

From this brief account of the Path, one may see that it is a way of life to be followed, practised and developed by each individual. It is self-discipline in body, word and mind, self-development and self-purification. It has nothing to do with belief, prayer, worship or ceremony.

The Path to Supreme Bliss, in Gems of Buddhist Wisdom, The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, 1996

love is real

2009-08-22T23:08:00.006-03:00

e.s.t. - Esbjörn Svensson Trio´s song Believe Beleft Below, lyrics by Josh Haden, with the Schleswig Holstein Chamber Orchestra, Pat Metheny on guitar and sung by Nils Landgren.

I dedicate this tune to Maria Silvia Ferraz de Camargo, the greatest love of my live. Together with Esbjörn Svensson and others R.I.P.

some people don´t die, they stay in the marvels they left passing by (dfuse)

this inner enemy is easily vanquished

2009-08-20T10:08:00.003-03:00

When we investigate carefully, we cannot find something, some powerful enemy, called negative emotion. In reality, there is nothing there. For example, when we experience aversion or attachment, these emotions are not located in the ugly or beautiful object that causes them, nor are they located in our minds, nor are they to be found anywhere else. When we look more closely, we realize that it is through the coming together of causes and conditions that these emotions have such power – they do not have any power of their own. They are simply a nexus of factors that we identify and label. In fact, the emotions are entirely dependent on other things. The harm they do to us is due to illusion. If we really understand this, the negative emotions cannot harm us. […] For negative emotions are actually impotent, based as they are on ignorance, which itself has no strength. This inner enemy is easily vanquished with the weapon of discriminating wisdom, which knows the true nature of the emotions.

Commentaries by The Dalai Lama taken from “A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night” (Shambala Dragon Editions, 1994)

the belly of God

2009-08-11T11:33:00.004-03:00

Do you want to know what joy is? Do you really want to know? Then listen. It’s nighttime, it’s raining, I’m hungry, I’m outside, I knock on the door of my house, I say it’s me, and they don’t let me in, I spend the night at the door of my house, in the rain, famished. There it is, that’s joy. Let whoever can understand understand. Let whoever wants to hear hear. Joy is never again being home, being always outside, weakened by everything, hungry for everything, being everywhere in the out-of-doors of the world as in the belly of God.

Christian Bobin, The secret of Saint Francis of Assisi (Shambala Publications, 1997)

photography ©Annie Griffiths Belt

a purpose

2009-08-05T02:22:00.001-03:00

Although there is no specific purpose in a man's existence, yet man is free to have some purpose in life.

in Gems of Buddhist Wisdom, The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, 1996

isn’t it?

2009-07-28T12:06:00.006-03:00

[…] “everything in the realms of the lower, middle and upper heavens is engaged in spiritual training. All at some point or other become bodhisattvas, so that the title bodhisattvas is unnecessary. If all are becoming Buddha and bodhisattva, surely there is no reason to make a distinction between ‘Buddha nature’ and all living creatures? At this moment you, us, and the ground we are treading on, all of us are in a process of striving and growth. The very motion of the whole universe is a process of profound spiritual growth. All change, all life and death, loving and hating, all is training and growth. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

Ko Un, Little Pilgrim, Parallax Press, Berkley, 2005

spiritual maturity

2009-07-22T10:32:00.004-03:00

For the psychologically mature person, the ills and injustices of life are handled by counter aggression, in which one makes an effort to eliminate the injustice and create justice. Often such efforts are dictatorial, full of anger and self-righteousness. In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice, but compassion. Not me against you, not me straightening out the present ill, fighting to gain a just result for myself and others, but compassion, a life that goes against nothing and fulfills everything.

[…]

The best answer to injustice is not justice, but compassion, or love. You ask, “But what am I to do in this difficult situation? I must do something!” Yes, but what? Always our practice must be the basis for our actions. And appropriate and compassionate response does not come from a fight for justice, but from that radical dimension of practice that “passeth all understanding”. […] Let us not adopt some facile, narrowly psychological view of our lives. The radical dimension I speak of demands everything we are and have. Joy, not happiness, is its fruit.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special – Living Zen (HarperCollins, 1993)

leaves

2009-07-18T10:28:00.001-03:00

The grape leaves outside my window are curiously beautiful. "Curiously" because it comes upon me as strange, after the long darkness of self-absorption and fear and shame in which I have been living, that things are beautiful, that independent to our catastrophes they continue to mantain their casual precision, the effortless abundance of inventive "effect", which is the hallmark and specialty of Nature. Nature: this morning it seems to me very clear that Nature be defined as that which exists without guilt. Our bodies are in Nature; our shoes, their laces, the little plastic tips of the laces -- everything around us and about us is Nature, and yet something holds us away from it, like the upward push of water which keeps us from touching the sandy bottom, ribbed and glimmering with crescental fragments of oyster shell, so clear to our eyes.

[...]

The grape leaves where they are not in each other's shadows are golden. Flat leaves, they take the sun flatly, and turn the absolute light, sum of the spectrum and source of all life, into the crayon yellow with which children render it. Here and there, wilt transmutes this lent radiance into a glowing orange, and the green of the still tender leaves -- for green persists long into autumn, if we look -- strains from the sunlight a fine-veined chartreuse. The shadows these leaves cast upon each other, though vagrant and nervous in the wind that sends friendly scavenging rattles scurrying across the roof, are yet quite various and definite, containing innumerable barbaric suggestions of scimitars, flanged spears, prongs, and menacing helmets. The net effect, however, is innocent of menace. On the contrary, its intricate simultaneous suggestion of shelter and openness, warmth and breeze, invites me outward; my eyes venture into the leaves beyond. I am surrounded by leaves. The oak's are tenacious claws of purplish rust; the elm's, scant feathers of a feminine yellow; the sumac's, a savage, toothed blush. I am upheld in a serene and burning universe of leaves. Yet something plucks me back, returns me to that inner darkness where guilt is the sun.

excerpt from Leaves, short story by John Updike in The Music School, First Vintage Books Edition, 1980

Photo ©Richard Small

a stroke of an insight

2009-07-13T14:18:00.002-03:00

2 words

2009-07-09T11:47:00.001-03:00

The secret of Soto Zen is just two words:

not always so.

Shunryu Suzuki-roshi

found this pearl of instant enlightenment on http://www.stevenkharper.com, where there was also the link to this picture of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, where my mind pictures my beloved friend and brother Arnold, his toes being kissed by the fish in the Tassajara river; to see more please refer to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/surharper/sets/72157600290243490/

that mass of dots

2009-07-03T11:47:00.002-03:00

quotes from the movie Latter Days (2003):

Do you ever read the Sunday comics?

Well, when I was a little kid, I use to put my nose right up to them. And I was just amazed because it looked like this mass of dots, and none of it made sense until I pulled back.

Life looks like that mass of dots to me sometimes.

None of it makes any sense, but I like to think that, from God's perspective, life, everything - even this - make sense. It's not just dots.

Instead we're all connected, and it's beautiful and funny and good. This close we can't expect it to make sense, not right now.

Sometimes it all still feels like a mass of dots. But more and more these days, I feel like we're all connected. And it's beautiful... and funny... and good.

Photography by Claire L. Evans

to be enlightened by all things

2009-06-24T13:34:00.002-03:00

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.

Eihei Dōgen, Genjōkōan (現成公案)

to guard their practice

2009-06-21T17:17:00.000-03:00

Those who wish to guard their practice
Should very attentively guard their minds,
For those who do not guard their minds
Will be unable to guard their practice.

Shantideva

A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, Translated by Stephen Batchelor, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala, 1979

the later returned

2009-06-15T10:03:00.002-03:00

When a drop quit home and later returned

It found a shell and became a pearl.

Rumi

excerpt from Rumi's Divan of Shems of Tabriz - Selected Odes, a new interpretation by James Cowan, Element Boooks, 1997

what happens if I sit with that?

2009-06-10T13:23:00.005-03:00

Only a self-centered self, a self that is attached to mind and body, can be hurt. That self is really a concept formed of thoughts we believe in. […] Suppose I feel I have no friends, and I’m very lonely. What happens if I sit with that? I begin to see that my feeling of loneliness are really just thoughts. As a matter of fact, I’m simply sitting here. Maybe I’m sitting alone in my room, without a date. Nobody has called me, and I fell lonely. In fact, however, I’m simply sitting. The loneliness and the misery are simply my thoughts, my judgments that things should be other than they are. I haven’t seen through them; I haven’t recognized that my misery is manufactured by me. The truth of the matter is, I’m simply sitting in my room. It takes time before we can see that just to sit is okay, just fine. I cling to the thought that if I don’t have pleasant and supportive company, I am miserable.

I’m not recommending a life in which we cut ourselves off in order to be free of attachment. Attachment concerns not what we have, but our opinions about what we have.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special – Living Zen (HarperCollins, 1993)

above, Morning Sun by Edward Hopper,1952; Oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 40 1/8 inches; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio -- to see more please refer to:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/interior/

an art

2009-06-07T09:36:00.000-03:00

If we learn to enjoy waiting,

we don't have to wait to enjoy.

Kazuaki Tanahashi

photo from Chronicles of a NYC Bench

nothing is real

2009-06-04T21:12:00.000-03:00

nothing is real, by effusion

this is not an improvement plan

2009-05-27T11:09:00.002-03:00

When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they’re going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are.

[...]

This is not an improvement plan; it is not a situation in which you try to be better than you are now. If you have a bad temper and you feel that you harm yourself and others, you might think that sitting for a week or a month will make your bad temper go away – you will be that sweet person that you always wanted to be. Never again will a harsh word leave your lily-white lips. The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself. The other problem is that our hang-ups, unfortunately or fortunately, contain our wealth. Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom. Someone who is very angry also has a lot of energy; that energy is what’s so juicy about him or her. That’s the reason people love that person. The idea isn’t to try to get rid of your anger, but to make friends with it, to see it clearly with precision and honesty, and also to see it with gentleness. That means not judging yourself as a bad person, but also not bolstering yourself by saying, “It’s good that I’m angry at them all the time”. The gentleness involves not repressing the anger but also not acting it out. It is something much softer and more openhearted than any of that. It involves learning how, once you have fully acknowledged the feeling of anger and the knowledge of who you are and what you do, to let it go. You can let go of the usual pitiful little story line that accompanies anger and begin to see clearly how you keep the whole thing going. So whether it’s anger or craving or jealousy or fear or depression – whatever it might be – the notion is not to try to get rid of it, but to make friends with it. that means getting to know it completely, with some kind of softness, and learning how, once you’ve experienced it fully, to let go.

Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape (Shambala Publications, Boston/London, 2001)

Illustration from the site Beauty Analysis, on the article Faces Variations by Sex; to see and read more on this -- and find how perfect you already are, no matter what -- please refer to:
http://www.beautyanalysis.com/mba_facevariationsbysex_page.htm

that was all

2009-05-20T21:06:00.004-03:00

One day, a Zen student came to his master and asked him a very important question about the ultimate reality. He had been there for three years, but he believed that his master had not taught him the best things concerning meditation. So he presented himself that morning to the master, hoping that he would teach him very important things. The master pointed to a cypress tree in the front yard and asked the student whether he had seen it or not. That was all. The master refused to say another word. I think perhaps the student had gone by that tree many times a day for many years but he had not had a chance to really look at the tree. Therefore, his master wanted him to go back to the tree and look at it. And that was his deepest teaching. I don't know whether the student got the message, but when I read the story, I got the message. If we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, it will be impossible for us to meet anything, including a flower or a tree.

[...] To go back to yourself, to be yourself again, in order to be in the present moment, in order for the encounter with the flower to be possible; that flower and [...] that cypress tree, they are life, they represent life. And if we cannot meet them, we cannot encounter them in a direct way, we miss life.

Thich Nhat Hanh, from the Dharma Talk Truly Seeing (available on cd, Parallax Press)

a pebble for your pocket

2009-05-16T12:57:00.004-03:00

A meditation with Pháp Huu, in the tradition of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, shot by David Nelson at Plum Village during the Winter Retreat 2008/2009.

Enjoy it!

the mirror smiles

2009-05-13T16:55:00.001-03:00

If we’re a free person, we aren’t conditioned by things around us. We just smile to them and we make our path. Our surroundings are like a mirror. If we smile, the mirror smiles. If we cry, the mirror cries. If we’re angry then the situation becomes angry. But even if the situation looks angry, if we’re able to smile, then the surroundings smile with us. So the surroundings are coming from our mind.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Nothing to do, Nowhere to go - Waking up to who you are, Parallax Press, 2007

photo: " uomo libero, amerai sempre il mare; è il tuo specchio "©Enzo Rubino; if you'd like to see more from this photographer please refer to:
http://fiveprime.org/hivemind/User/Enzo%20Rubino

the road is covered with diamonds

2009-05-09T13:42:00.001-03:00

The path of life seems to be mostly difficulties, things that give trouble. Yet the longer we practice, the more we begin to understand that those sharp rocks on the road are in fact like precious jewels; they help us to prepare the proper conditions for our lives. […] There are sharp rocks everywhere. What changes from years of practice is coming to know something you didn’t know before: that there are no sharp rocks – the road is covered with diamonds.

[…] the longer we practice, the very difficulties that life presents more and more can be seen as jewels. Increasingly, problems do not rule out practice, but support it. Instead of finding that practice is too difficult, that we have too many problems, we see that the problems themselves are the jewels, and we devote ourselves to being with them in a way we never dreamt of before. In my interviews with students, I constantly hear about such shifts: “Three years ago, I couldn’t possibly have handled this situation, but now..” That’s the turning over, preparing the ground. That’s what is necessary for the body and mind truly to transform. It’s not that problems disappear or that life “improves”, but that life slowly transforms – and the sharp rocks that we hated become welcome jewels. We may not delight to see them when they appear, but we appreciate the opportunity that they give, and so we embrace them rather than running away from them. This is the end of complaints about our life. Even that difficult person, the one who criticizes you, the one who doesn’t respect your opinion, or whatever – everybody has somebody or something, some sharp rock. Such a rock is precious; it is an opportunity, a jewel to embrace.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special – Living Zen (HarperCollins, 1993)

Photo © daily inspiration

mankind is no island

2009-05-05T16:33:00.005-03:00

I dedicate this post to my dear friends and Brothers from the other Great South Land, (in order of appearence in my Plum Village life) Steven, Mark, Garry, Nathan, Richard, Ian and Shane.
Thank you for being there.

the scattered one, the collected one

2009-05-01T07:47:00.001-03:00

There are Martha and Mary, the two sisters encountered by the Passing Christ. Martha was concerned about order and food, awhirl in her kitchen, lost in the sound of dishes and boiling water. Mary, her apron rolled up under a bench – Mary sitting on the ground, her legs folded under her like the wings of a bird in a moment of repose, face open, hands empty – Mary was concerned about the love without which all is sad, all food dull. Martha and Mary. The scattered one and the collected one. The unresting one and the pacified one.

Christian Bobin, The secret of Saint Francis of Assisi (Shambala Publications, 1997)

image above: Johannes Vermeer, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1654-55 (?),Oil on canvas, 160 x 142 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; to see more works by this Dutch painter please refer to: http://www.wga.hu/html/v/vermeer/index.html

rain pouring on the universe

2009-04-24T08:41:00.005-03:00

In today’s sky
the charm of rain
pouring on the universe
imbues the heart
of each and everyone

Jien (Jichin-daikasho, 1155-1225), A Hundred Poems on the Essential Texts of the Lotus Sutra, as translated into English by Jean-Noel Robert

photo above: land art by Andy Goldsworthy, Rain shadow (St. Abbs, Scotland, June 1984); to see more from this artist please refer to:
http://www.goldsworthy.cc.gla.ac.uk

somebody has to do it

2009-04-18T12:10:00.000-03:00

To be thoroughly lazy is a tough job, but somebody has to do it. Industrious people build industry. Lazy people build civilization.

Kazuaki Tanahashi, Brush Mind, Parallax Press, 1990

to see and read more from Kazuaki Tanahashi, please refer to:
http://www.brushmind.net/index.html

resurrection is a practice, not a ceremony

2009-04-12T07:31:00.000-03:00

Nearly all of us are carrying our corpse as we walk around. We’re not truly alive, we’re not truly awake.

It’s very easy if we want to wake up and be a living person. In Christianity, they have the concept of resurrection. In Buddhism, resurrection is a practice, not a ceremony. When we hear the bell we can be resurrected. A single breath or step can resurrect us.

As we look around us, we can see if we’re among the living or among the dead. We may be right next to someone, but they don’t notice us, they are carried away by their memories, their anger, or sadness. Each moment can be a moment of resurrection, but they aren’t there to experience it.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Nothing to do, Nowhere to go - Waking up to who you are, Parallax Press, 2007

if you want to Wake Up...

cultivate

2009-04-08T08:46:00.006-03:00

time won't wait for you!
you can dream your life
but you'd better live your dreams

Thank you for reminding me, dear Pháp Thê...
With love and gratitude, I shall cultivate tomatoes, tomatoes and love being the same.

heaven and hell

2009-04-02T17:27:00.004-03:00

There is another story that you may have read that has to do with what we call heaven and hell, life and death, good and bad. It’s a story about how those things don’t really exist except as a creation of our own minds. It goes like this: A big burly samurai comes to the wise man and says, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.” And the roshi looks him in the face and says: “Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you?” The samurai starts to get purple in the face, his hair starts to stand up, but the roshi won’t stop, he keeps saying, “A miserable worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?” Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword, and he’s just about to cut off the head of the roshi. Then the roshi says, “That’s hell”. The samurai, who is in fact a sensitive person, instantly gets it, that he just created his own hell; he was deep in hell. It was black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment, so much so that he was going to kill this man. Tears fill his eyes and he starts to cry and he puts his palms together and the roshi says, “That’s heaven”.

Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape (Shambala Publications, Boston/London, 2001)

illustration: Yoshitoshi Taiso (1839-1892), Mount Ji Ming moon (Keimeizan no tsuki), ukiyo-e print series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon; to see more of these wonderful prints please visit:
http://verwoerd.info/moon/

see you in the dark

2009-03-28T09:02:00.002-03:00

Today, Saturday, March 28, lights out from 8:30 to 9:30pm., and we'll be together again.

The light of our mindfulness will shine, and it shall be not Plum Village, but "Plum World"...

To learn more please refer to:
http://www.earthhour.org/about/

both sides, now

2009-03-25T12:50:00.002-03:00

this post is dedicated to my dear friends Matthias Hammerl, my best dj, and Arnold Novak, dear Dharma brother -- this song has never been as beautiful as when in Plum Village Arnold sang it and Ed played it on the guitar, never so simple and sweet -- the version to be heard here is by Joni Mitchell herself, recorded a few years ago.
Thank you for the love, joy and support -- Happy Continuation!

to watch the video of this version, please go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQSlH-LLTQ

photo: ocean moon ©lakewentworth; to see more:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/roome/2370001916/in/set-72157604303324854/

may I be a bed for all who wish to rest

2009-03-22T08:52:00.005-03:00

18
May I be a protector for those without one,
A guide for all travelers on the way;
May I be a bridge, a boat and a ship
For all who wish to cross (the water).

19
May I be an island for those who seek one,
And a lamp for those desiring light,
May I be a bed for all who wish to rest
And a slave for all who want a slave.

20
May I be a wishing jewel, a magic vase,
Powerful mantras and great medicine,
May I become a wish-fulfilling tree
And a cow of plenty for the world.

21
Just like space
And the great elements such as earth,
May I always support the lives
Of all the boundless creatures.

22
And until they pass away from pain,
May I also be the source of life
For all the realms of varied beings
That reach unto the ends of space.

Shantideva

excerpt from Chapter III – Full Acceptance of the Awakening of the Mind, in A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, translated by Stephen Batchelor, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala, 1979/2007

freer

2009-03-18T15:05:00.001-03:00

If we have been trying for years to attach our hose to this or that faucet, and each time have discovered that it wasn’t enough, there will come a moment of profound discouragement. We begin to sense that the problem is not our failure to connect with something out there, but that nothing external can ever satisfy the thirst. This is when we are more likely to begin a serious practice. This can be an awful moment – to realize that nothing is ever going to satisfy. Perhaps we have a good job, a good relationship or family, yet we’re still thirsty – and it dawns on us that nothing really can fulfill our demands. We may even realize that changing our life – rearranging the furniture – isn’t going to work, either. That moment of despair is in fact a blessing, the real beginning.

[…]

Christians call this realization the “dark night of the soul”. We’ve worn out everything we can do, and we don’t see what to do next. And so we suffer. Though it feels miserable at the time, that suffering is the turning point. Practice brings us to such fruitful suffering, and helps us stay with it. When we do, at some point the suffering begins to transform itself, an the water begins to flow. In order for that to happen, however, all of our pretty dreams about life and practice have to go, including the belief that good practice – or indeed, anything at all – should make us happy. The promise that is never kept is based on belief systems, personally centered thoughts that keep us stuck and thirsty. We have thousands of them. It’s impossible to eliminate them all; we don’t live long enough for that. Practice does not require that we get rid of them, but simply that we see through them and recognize them as empty, as invalid.

[…]

It’s useful to review our belief systems in this way, because there’s always one that we don’t see. In each belief system we hide a promise. As for Zen practice: the only promise we count upon is that when we make up to our lives, we’ll be freer persons. If we wake up to the way we see life and deal with it, we will slowly be freer – not necessarily happier or better, but freer.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special – Living Zen (HarperCollins, 1993)

our fellow-servant

2009-03-14T08:30:00.003-03:00

This transient flower,
if we bring all our heart
in contemplating it
is our fellow-servant
in Buddha’s abode

Jien (Jichin-daikasho, 1155-1225), A Hundred Poems on the Essential Texts of the Lotus Sutra, as translated into English by Jean-Noel Robert

photo ©Chikache; to see more from this wonderful set of photos please refer to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chikache/404067463/in/set-439295/

the key is to wake up

2009-03-11T06:45:00.003-03:00

It is as if we had looked around to find out what would be the greatest wealth that we could possibly possess in order to lead a decent, good, completely fulfilling, energetic, inspired life, and found it all right here.

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way. One of the major obstacles to what is traditionally called enlightenment is resentment, feeling cheated, holding a grudge about who you are, where you are, what you are. This is why we talk so much about making friends with ourselves, because, for some reason or other, we don’t feel that kind of satisfaction in a full and complete way. Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have. Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.

Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape (Shambala Publications, Boston/London, 2001)

Illustration: Wake up! ©Ed Boxall, to see more from this artist please refer to:
http://edboxall.co.uk/

do not pretend

2009-03-07T12:12:00.001-03:00

Master Linji, Teaching 7

The master came into the Dharma Hall and said, “Someone is standing on a towering peak alone. There is no path from the peak. Someone else is standing at the crossroads but cannot advance. Of these two, who will come first and who after? Do not pretend to be Vimalakirti or play the role of the great master Fu. Farewell.”

Commentary on this teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh:

We’ve all been in this situation. It’s very dangerous when there’s no place to advance or retreat. We might feel as if we’re going to die. There is no way out and we’re frozen. How do we survive? The Master warns us not to be like Master Fu or Vimalakirti, two very eloquent lay Buddhist practitioners. He warns us no to try and talk or think our way out of our predicament.

So how do we escape? We can’t. all we can do in the situation is surrender and be in the moment completely without trying to pretend we know the way out. In this contradiction, we find the truth. Once we surrender to the situation, we see the path. Where before we were caught, now we are liberated.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Nothing to do, Nowhere to go - Waking up to who you are, Parallax Press, 2007

Illustration: painting by Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1817-18, Oil on canvas, 94,8 x 74,8 cm,
Kunsthalle, Hamburg; to see more paintings by Caspar David Friedrich please check:
http://www.allpaintings.org/v/Romanticism/Caspar+David+Friedrich/

the more he loves

2009-03-05T00:03:00.004-03:00

He is with his love the way a child is with his ball in front of a wall. He throws his utterance, the ball of radiant utterance, the I-love-you rolled up on itself; he throws it against a wall that is separated from him by the distance of all the days he has left to live. Then he waits for the ball to bounce back. He throws thousands of balls. None of them ever comes back. He continues, always smiling: the game is its own reward, love is its own answer.

Well, yes, he does say a bit more. He says: I love you and I am sorry to love you so little, to love you so badly, to not know how to love you. The closer he gets to the light, the more he discovers himself full of shadows. The more he loves, the more he recognizes himself as unworthy of loving. The fact is, there is no progress in love, no perfection that one might someday attain. No love is adult, mature, and reasonable. In relation to love there are only children – there is only a spirit of childhood that is abandon, carefreeness, a spirit of letting go of spirit. Age adds up. Experience accumulates. Reason constructs. The spirit of childhood is always new, always starts afresh at the beginning of the world, with the first steps of love. The man of reason is an accumulated man, a heaped-up man, a constructed man. The man of childhood is the contrary of a man added on to himself: a man subtracted from himself, continually reborn in every birth of everything. He is an imbecile playing ball. Or a saint talking to his God. Or both at the same time.

Christian Bobin, The secret of Saint Francis of Assisi (Shambala Publications, 1997)

it is love

2009-02-17T16:21:00.000-03:00

It is love that makes hearts rotate. If there weren't any love, the Earth would just freeze.

Rumi

happiness is what

2009-02-13T09:23:00.001-03:00

A sign-board at the parting of roads, for instance, indicates directions, and it is left the wayfarer to tread along the way watching his steps. The board certainly will not tek him to his desired destination.

A doctor diagnoses the ailment and prescribes; it is left to the patient to test the prescription. The attitude of the Buddha towards his followers is like that of an understanding and compassionate teacher or a physician.

The highest worship is paid to the best of men, those great and daring spiritd who have, with their wide and penetrating frasp of reality, wiped out ignorance, and rooted out defilements. The men who saw Truth are true helpers, but Buddhists do not pray to them. They only pay reverence to the revealers of Truth for having pointed out the path to true happiness and deliverance. Happiness is what one must achieve of oneself; nobody else can make one better or worse. "Purity and impurity depend on oneself. One can neither purify nor defile another".

[...] Though we can call the teaching of the Buddha 'Buddhism', thus including it among the 'isms' and 'ologies', it does not really matter what we label it. Call it religion, philosophy, Buddhism or by any other name you like. These labels are of little significance to one who goes in search of truth and deliverance.

The timeless message, by Ven Piyadassi Thera, in Gems of Buddhist Wisdom, The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, 1996

incovenience

2009-02-08T16:35:00.000-03:00

Once you know that the purpose of life is simply to walk forward and continually to use your life to wake you up rather than to put you to sleep, then there's that sense of wholeheartedness about inconvenience. (...) Comfort orientation murders the spirit. Opting for coziness, having that as a prime reason for existing, becomes a continued obstacle to taking a leap and doing something new, doing something unusual, like going as a stranger into a strange land. (...) But in wholeheartedly practicing and following that path, this incovenience is not an obstacle. It's simply a certain texture of life, a certain energy of life. (...) It's like someone laughing in your ear, challenging you to figure out what to do when you don't know what to do. It humbles you. It opens your heart.

Pema Chödrön

in The Wisdom of No Escape, Shambala Publications, Boston-London 2001

in the midst of winter

2009-02-02T15:34:00.000-03:00

In the midst of winter
I find in myself at last
Invencible summer

Soen Nakagawa

in Endless Vow - The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa, Shambala Publications, 1996

To see more photos from thıs set please refer to:
outdoors.webshots.com/photo/10574353550008942...

the Buddha eye

2009-01-28T16:34:00.000-03:00

This is the story of Plum Village: how to transmit the Buddha eye, not build a big institution and become famous

Thich Nhat Hanh

in Twenty Years of Plum Village Life, Parallax Press (May 2003)

around the mind

2009-01-21T11:59:00.004-03:00

mindlessness
mindfulness

less mind
ness mind
full mind
single mind
empty mind
beyond mind
no mind
never mind

mindlessfulness

Kazuaki Tanahashi, Brush Mind, Parallax Press, 1990

above, one-brush paint by Kazuaki Tanahashi; to see more from this artist please refer to:
http://www.brushmind.net/kaz.html

the mirror

2009-01-17T01:56:00.000-03:00

How grateful he was, after all, to his visitor's! -- for each of them left him something to clarify his situation. He was choosing, yes, and treading back through the woods, welcomed by the calls of unseen birds and the gestures of unnamed plants, he sought for some further choice, some addtional dismissal with which he could atone for the night's parasitic ecstasy. He smashed the mirror. He held it squarely above the hearthstone, so the last thing it reflected was a slice of blue zenith, and let it drop. The fragments he swept up and buried in a place far from the house, covering the earth with leaves so he could not find the spot again. But from that sector of woods, for a while, he felt watched, by buried eyes. The sensation passed in daylight but persisted at night, when it gave his sleep depth, as had the knowledge when he was a child that an unknown hour his mother, though still downstairs, on her way to bed would come into his room and touch his forehead and tuck the kicked covers around him.

excerpt from The Hermit, short story by John Updike in The Music School, First Vintage Books Editions, 1980

a clod of earth

2009-01-12T15:37:00.000-03:00

Upon Love's face gaze, that you may be considered a man.
Don't sit with cold people; their breath will chill you.

Seek from Love's face something other than beauty;
It's time you associated with a genuine friend.

A clod of earth, you'll not rise in the air
Unless you break and become mere dust.

If you don't break, he who made you will;
When death does, will you remain separate?

A fresh root makes green again a leaf that yellows;
So don't blame Love at your increasing paleness.

O friend,if you attain perfection among us,
This throne will be yours, your every desire gained.

But if you remain too long on this earth,
You will be as dice, passing from place to place.

If Shems of Tabriz, O Wild One! draws you to his side,
On your escape from gaol, you'll re-enter his orbit.

Rumi

in Rumi's Dıvan of Shems of Tabriz, a new ınterpretation by James Cowan

highest goal

2009-01-08T09:48:00.001-03:00

[Buddhism] teaches us to serve others, to sacrifice our own comfort for the sake of suffering humanity, and to observe religious precepts or disciplines voluntarily, but not as commandments imposed by some unseen power. By observing such good principles according to our own conviction not only do we ge the chance to be perfect but we also help others to live in peace.

This perfection is the highest goal which a person must attain in order to gain his salvation. It cannot be obtained through the influence of any god or mediator.
[...]

That is why the Buddha always welcomes people to come and see His teachings but not to come and believe at once. He also advised people to choose a proper religion by considering, and investigating in various ways without accepting anything through emotion or blind faith. This is why Buddhism is called a doctrine of analysis.

Why Buddhism, by Ven. Dr. Sri Dhammananda, in Gems of Buddhist Wisdom

still

2009-01-04T16:55:00.000-03:00

The winter tempest
Hid itself in the bamboos
And grew still

Basho

seek unity

2009-01-01T11:21:00.001-03:00

In my mind’s eye I still have the image of my first night flight in Argentina. It was a dark night, with only occasional scattered lights glittering like stars on the plain.

Each one, in that ocean of shadows, was a sign of the miracle of consciousness. In one home people were reading, or thinking, or sharing confidences. In another, perhaps, they were searching through space, wearying themselves with the mathematics of the Andromeda nebula. In another they were making love. These small flames shone far apart in the landscape, demanding their fuel. Even the most unassuming of them, the flame of the poet, the teacher or the carpenter. But among these living stars, how many closed windows, how many extinct stars, how many sleeping men...

We must surely seek unity. We must seek to communicate with some of these fires burning far apart in the landscape.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des Hommes, 1939), Penguin Classics

the man of God

2008-12-28T16:27:00.000-03:00

The man of God remains drunk without wine,
The mand of God is replete without meat.

The man of God is distraught and confused,
The man of God is hungry and fatigued.

The man of God is a king in pauper's clothes,
The man of God is a treasure in a ruin.

The man of God is neither air nor earth,
The man of God is not fire nor water.

The man of God is a boundless ocean,
The man of God rains pearls on a clear day.

The man of God has countless moons and skies,
The man of God has unnumbered suns.

The man of God draws wisdom from truth,
The man of God learns without books.

The man of God is beyond belief and religion,
To the man of God right and wrong are the same.

The man of God has escaped from un-being,
The man of God is waited on in glory.

Wild One, the mand of God is in hiding,
You look for the man of God everywhere!

Rumi

ın Rumi's Dıvan of Shems of Tabriz, a new interpretation by James Cowan

this transcription is dedicated to Ihsan, a man of God

do this

2008-12-25T15:59:00.001-03:00

The altruism of bodhichitta is the path of all beings of great potential. Therefore train yourself in the deeds of bodhisattvas, and do this on a grand scale! Shoulder the responsibility of freeing all beings from samsara. Of all the eighty-four thousand sections of the Buddha's teachings, none is more profound than bodhichitta.

Dudjom Rinpoche

in Counsels from my Heart, Shechen Publications, New Delhi 2004

above: Great Bodhisattva, Gupta period, Ajanta caves, Indıa

miracle of each moment

2008-12-18T12:49:00.002-03:00

Let the thread appear and disappear.

Kazuaki Tanahashi, in Brush Mind (Parallax Press, 1990)

above, one-brush paint by Kazuaki Tanahashi; to see more from this artist please refer to:
http://www.brushmind.net/kaz.html

ah, when to the heart of man

2008-12-06T07:39:00.000-03:00

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost, Reluctance, from the book A Boy's Will (Published/Written in 1913); to read more of this poet please refer to:

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertfrost#poems

Photo ©Richard&Joanne Friday

but it is

2008-11-28T17:21:00.000-03:00

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

Tao Te Ching, chap. 11

as translated by Stephen Mitchell, quoted in Endless Vow: the zen path oh Soen Nakagawa, Shambala Publications, 1996

above, Sun ın an empty room, painting by Edward Hopper; to learn more please refer to:

dusty affairs

2008-11-22T15:59:00.000-03:00

Looking for serenity
you have come
to the monastery.

Looking for serenity
I am leaving
the monastery.

Kwatz!

Stop running about seeking!

The dusty affairs of the world
fill the day,
fill the night.

Soen Nakagawa

ın Endless Vow - The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa, Shambala Publıcatıons, 1996

that light

2008-11-20T02:12:00.000-03:00

I asked a child, walking with a candle,
"From where comes that light?"
Instantly he blew it out.
"Tell me where it is gone - and I tell you where it came from".

Hasan of Basra

The Sufis, Idries Shah (Anchor Books, 1971/1990)

the knower and the knowledge are one

2008-11-16T07:59:00.002-03:00

In meditation we learn to still the mind and the senses so that we can directly experience the inner reality of the heart. One friend had a dream that gave her a glimpse of the sweetness beyond the mind:

I am sitting with the group and the teacher silently speaks to me, saying, "I will show you what this meditation can offer you." The group begins to meditate and when I fall into meditation I hear the sound of the most beautiful chord of music whose notes become louder and whose vibration fills my whole being until its essence absorbs me in an intense sweetness and bliss which I can only describe as a glimpse of heaven. The notes cease as the meditation ends.

Such bliss is the substance of the Self which cannot be experienced on the level of the mind. The mind is known as the "slayer of the Real," for it separates us from spiritual Truth which is found within the heart. While the mind understands through duality, the differentiation of subject and object, Truth is always a state of oneness: the knower and the knowledge are one, the lover and Beloved are united. Meditation is a technique to take us from the world of duality to the oneness within the heart. Muhâsibî, a ninth- century Sufi from Baghdad, stresses its importance:

Meditation is the chief possession of the mystic, that whereby the sincere and the God-fearing make progress on the journey to God.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Sufi Meditation of the Heart; if youd' like to read more please refer to:
http://www.goldensufi.org/A-SufiMeditationHeart.html

Photo: Leaf on Concrete© http://www.rbhphotography.com/

of the soul

2008-11-11T16:06:00.001-03:00

At dawn a moon appeared from the waves
And ascended, gazing down at me. Then,

Like a falcon snatching a bird in flight,
It snatched me up and flew away.

When I looked up I no longer saw myself:
Into that moon my body had eased, by grace

Of the soul in which I travelled, moon-driven
Until the secret of God's revelation halted me.

Nine spheres of Heaven had emerged in that moon;
And the sea washed over the slip of my being,

Breaking against me in waves. Again Wisdom's
Voice boomed; as it happens so it occurs.

At every foam-fleck of the ocean a figure
Emerged and slowly disappeared, just as

My foam-flecked body, receiving a sea-sign,
Melted within and slowly turned to spirit.

Without the regal power of Shems of Tabrız,
Holdıng the moon or becoming the sea are dreams.

Rumi

in Rumi's Dıvan of Shems of Tabriz, a new interpretation by James Cowan

reflecting my heart

2008-11-09T14:57:00.001-03:00

Clearness!
sky and water
reflecting my heart.

Soen Nakagawa

(in Endless Vow - The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa, Shambala Publications, 1996)

Photo: Shapes in shades of green, through the clear sea water close to Fethiye, Turkey - EfratNakash.com

your gaze commands

2008-11-08T12:01:00.000-03:00

Your gaze
commands the sun
the tree, the river - Love
to rise, to grow, to flow
- to rise, to grow, to flow

dedicated to Richard and Ihsan, Dear Brothers on the Path of Love

we can write cantatas

2008-11-07T09:50:00.000-03:00

I once stood by three countrymen at the deathbed of their mother. There was grief, of course. For the second time the umbilical cord was cut. For the second time, the knot that binds two generations was unfastened. Those three sons were discovering that they were alone, with everything to learn, with no family table now where they could meet at festivals, with no pole of self-recognition. But in that moment of severance I was also discovering that life can be granted for a second time. Each of these sons would in turn become the head of a family, a rallying-point and a patriarch, until the time when they would pass on the leadership to that little group of children now playing outside the door.

I looked at the mother, that old peasant with her firm and peaceful face, with her tight lips and her face that was now a mask of stone. And I saw it in the faces of the sons. That mask had served to mould their faces. That body had served to mould their bodies, those fine examples of men. And now she lay there broken, but like a matrix after the precious metal had been extracted. Sons and daughters in their turn would mould their children in the image of their flesh. No one died on that farm. The mother is dead, long live the mother!

There was grief, yes, but that picture of the lineage is so clear and simple. On its way it casts off those white-haired outer skins one by one, as it travels on towards its own unknowable truth, through all its metamorphoses.

[…]

What was thus being transmtited from generation to generation, at the slow pace of a tree’s growth, was life itself, but it was also consciousness. An ascension filled with mistery! From flowing lava, from the unformed substance of a star, from a miraculously germinated living cell we have emerged and have risen little by little until we can write cantatas and weigh galaxies.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des hommes, 1939) Penguin Classics

give me freedom

2008-11-06T11:52:00.001-03:00

Give me freedom to fly without a shadow,
Give me freedom to sing without an echo,
and to love without leaving traces.

This is the entrance page to The Golden Sufi site; to have access to it please refer to: http://www.goldensufi.org/

trying to become

2008-11-02T11:53:00.000-03:00

When the wild ducks pass in the migrating season, they cause strange tides to rise in the lands beneath them. As if magnetized by the great triangular flock, the farmyard ducks try clumsily to leave the ground. The call of the wild has awakened some vestige of the wild within them, and for a moment they have turned into birds of passage. In those hard little heads normally filled with simple images of the pond, of worms and ot their roosting-house, now stretch vast continents, the taste of the ocean winds and the shape of the seas. The creature never knew until now that its brain could contain such marvels, and it beats its wings in contempt for seed and worms, trying to become a wild duck.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre de Hommes, 1939), Penguin Classics

reach the sea

2008-10-28T08:19:00.000-03:00

When you arrive at the sea, you do not talk of the tributary.

Hakim Sanai, The Walled Garden of Truth

quotation by Idries Shah in The Sufis (Anchor Books 1990)

to lords and ladies of Byzantium

2008-10-24T09:49:00.001-03:00

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Sailing to Byzantium, William Butler Yeats, from The Tower, 1928

(*)Note: ok, I am not sailing to Byzantium, but actually flying to Istanbul -- and could think of nothing else to post upon my return to Turkey.
If you'd like to read more poems of W. B. Yeats, please refer to:
http://www.csun.edu/~hceng029/yeats/poemsalpha.html

Image: Woman from Byzantium, by Mersad Berber (Bosnia and Herzegovina); if you'd like to see more fine works from this artist please refer to:
http://www.mersad-berber.com/eng/home.html

my flight

2008-10-23T20:24:00.001-03:00

I leave no trace of wings in the air,

but I am glad I have had my flight

Rabindranath Tagore

If you like to read more about birds and flights from this author, please refer to:
http://www.poetseers.org/nobel_prize_for_literature/tagore/stray

the source

2008-10-19T20:21:00.002-03:00

a poem by Rabindranath Tagore

The sleep that flits on baby's eyes
--does anybody know from where it comes?
Yes, there is a rumour that it has its dwelling where,
in the fairy village among shadows of the forest
dimly lit with glow-worms,
there hang two shy buds of enchantment.
From there it comes to kiss baby's eyes.

The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he
sleeps--does anybody know where it was born?
Yes, there is a rumour that a young pale beam of
a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud,
and there the smile was first born in the
dream of a dew-washed morning
--the smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps.

The sweet, soft freshness that blooms on baby's limbs
--does anybody know where it was hidden so long?
Yes, when the mother was a young girl it lay
pervading her heart in tender and silent
mystery of love--the sweet,
soft freshness that has bloomed on baby's limbs.

If you'd like to read more poems by this author, please refer to:
http://www.poetseers.org/nobel_prize_for_literature/tagore/tagores_poems

Photos ©karen glassford; more to be seen at:
http://adventures4god.blogspot.com/2007/08/india-land-bustling-with-beautiful.html

new life

2008-10-16T15:21:00.003-03:00

"And when the body grows weak through old age, or becomes weak through illness, at that time that person, after separating himself from his members, as a mango, or fig, or Pippala-fruit is separated from the stalk, hastens back again as he came, to the place from which he started, to new life. . .

"Then both his knowledge and his work take hold of him and his acquaintance with former things.

"And as a caterpillar, after having reached the end of a blade of grass, and after having made another approach to another blade, draws itself together towards it, thus does this Self, after having thrown off this body and dispelled all ignorance, and after making another approach to another body, draw himself together towards it.

"And as a goldsmith, taking a piece of gold, turns it into another, newer and more beautiful shape, so does this Self, after having thrown off this body and dispelled all ignorance, make unto himself another, newer and more beautiful shape. . .

"Now as a man is like this or like that, according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be: a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad. He becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds.

"And here they say that a person consists of desires. And as is his desire, so is his will; and as is his will, so is his deed; and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.

"And here there is this verse: 'To whatever object a man's own mind is attached, to that he goes strenuously together with his deed; and having obtained the consequences of whatever deed he does here on earth, he returns again from that world . . . to this world of action.'[1]

"So much for the man who desires. But as to the man who does not desire, who, not desiring, freed from desires, is satisfied in his desires, or desires the Self only, his vital spirits do not depart elsewhere--being Brahman, he goes to Brahman.

"On this there is this verse: 'When all desires which once entered his heart are undone, then does the mortal become immortal, then he obtains Brahman.'"

* * *

"Now as a man, when embraced by a beloved wife, knows nothing that is without, nothing that is within, thus this person, when embraced by the intelligent Self, knows nothing that is without, nothing that is within. This indeed is his true form, in which his wishes are fulfilled, in which the Self only is his wish, in which no wish is left--free from any sorrow.

"Then a father is not a father, a mother not a mother, the worlds not worlds, the gods not gods, the Vedas not Vedas. Then a thief is not a thief, a murderer not a murderer, a Kandala not a Kandala, [2] a Sramana not a Sramana, [3] a Tapasa not a Tapasa.[4] He is not followed by good, not followed by evil, for he has then overcome all the sorrows of the heart."

[1] This is the law of karma.
[2] The kandalas were the lowest of all the pariahs, those without caste.
[3] A holy beggar.
[4] A person atoning for sins.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, from the translation by Max Mueller, The Upanishads, in Max Mueller, ed., The Sacred Books of the East, 50 vols. (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1879-1910), vol. 1, pp. 92, 104-105 and vol. 15, pp. 173, 175-177, 168-169 passim. Introduction and e-text copyright 2005 by David W. Koeller timemaster@thenagain.info. All rights reserved.

Photo ©Zeynep Kanra; to see more photos by Zeynep Kanra please refer to:
http://www.zeynepinyeri.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeynepk/

constant flux

2008-10-13T15:14:00.004-03:00

Buddhism holds that everything is in constant flux.
Thus the question is whether we are to accept change passively and be swept away by it, or whether we are to take the lead and create positive changes on our own initiative...

His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Photo and quotation from Rick Gunn's travel journal, that has been a great source of inspiration and encouragement to me, to be read at:
http://www.rickgunnphotography.com/project.php

a simple path

2008-10-12T17:01:00.002-03:00

Today I would like to share a video with S. N. Goenka lecturing about his Vipassana method, so that you have an idea of the retreat I have just undertaken. This is part 3 of the video entitled A Simple Path.

If you'd like to, you can watch part 1 by clicking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSxVYp3X6Yk

Part 2 is to be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAjFR4woOjg

Thank you.

when we experience this truth

2008-10-08T17:52:00.001-03:00

continuation from the last post:

The more one practices this technique, the more quickly negativities will dissolve. Gradually the mind becomes free of defilements, becomes pure. A pure mind is always full of love—selfless love for all others, full of compassion for the failings and sufferings of others, full of joy at their success and happiness, full of equanimity in the face of any situation.

When one reaches this stage, the entire pattern of one's life changes. It is no longer possible to do anything vocally or physically which will disturb the peace and happiness of others. Instead, a balanced mind not only becomes peaceful, but the surrounding atmosphere also becomes permeated with peace and harmony, and this will start affecting others, helping others too.

By learning to remain balanced in the face of everything experienced inside, one develops detachment towards all that one encounters in external situations as well. However, this detachment is not escapism or indifference to the problems of the world. Those who regularly practice Vipassana become more sensitive to the sufferings of others, and do their utmost to relieve suffering in whatever way they can—not with any agitation, but with a mind full of love, compassion and equanimity. They learn holy indifference—how to be fully committed, fully involved in helping others, while at the same time maintaining balance of mind. In this way they remain peaceful and happy, while working for the peace and happiness of others.

This is what the Buddha taught: an art of living. He never established or taught any religion, any “ism”. He never instructed those who came to him to practice any rites or rituals, any empty formalities. Instead, he taught them just to observe nature as it is, by observing the reality inside. Out of ignorance we keep reacting in ways which harm ourselves and others. But when wisdom arises—the wisdom of observing reality as it is—this habit of reacting falls away. When we cease to react blindly, then we are capable of real action—action proceeding from a balanced mind, a mind which sees and understands the truth. Such action can only be positive, creative, helpful to ourselves and to others.

What is necessary, then, is to “know thyself”—advice which every wise person has given. We must know ourselves, not just intellectually in the realm of ideas and theories, and not just emotionally or devotionally, simply accepting blindly what we have heard or read. Such knowledge is not enough. Rather, we must know reality experientially. We must experience directly the reality of this mental-physical phenomenon. This alone is what will help us be free of our suffering.

This direct experience of our own inner reality, this technique of self-observation, is what is called Vipassana mhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifeditation. In the language of India in the time of the Buddha, passana meant seeing in the ordinary way, with one's eyes open; but vipassana is observing things as they actually are, not just as they appear to be. Apparent truth has to be penetrated, until we reach the ultimate truth of the entire psycho-physical structure. When we experience this truth, then we learn to stop reacting blindly, to stop creating negativities—and naturally the old ones are gradually eradicated. We become liberated from misery and experience true happiness.

To read the entire text, based upon a talk given by Mr. S.N. Goenka in Berne, Switzerland, please refer to:
http://www.dhamma.org/en/art.shtml

the other side of the coin

2008-10-05T15:54:00.001-03:00

[..]

An ordinary person cannot observe abstract defilements of the mind—abstract fear, anger or passion. But with proper training and practice it is very easy to observe respiration and body sensations, both of which are directly related to mental defilements.

Respiration and sensations will help in two ways. First, they will be like private secretaries. As soon as a negativity arises in the mind, the breath will lose its normality; it will start shouting, “Look, something has gone wrong!” And we cannot scold the breath; we have to accept the warning. Similarly, the sensations will tell us that something has gone wrong. Then, having been warned, we can start observing the respiration, start observing the sensations, and very quickly we find that the negativity passes away.

This mental-physical phenomenon is like a coin with two sides. On one side are the thoughts and emotions arising in the mind, on the other side are the respiration and sensations in the body. Any thoughts or emotions, any mental impurities that arise manifest themselves in the breath and the sensations of that moment. Thus, by observing the respiration or the sensations, we are in fact observing mental impurities. Instead of running away from the problem, we are facing reality as it is. As a result, we discover that these impurities lose their strength; they no longer overpower us as they did in the past. If we persist, they eventually disappear altogether and we begin to live a peaceful and happy life, a life increasingly free of negativities.

In this way the technique of self-observation shows us reality in its two aspects, inner and outer. Previously we only looked outward, missing the inner truth. We always looked outside for the cause of our unhappiness; we always blamed and tried to change the reality outside. Being ignorant of the inner reality, we never understood that the cause of suffering lies within, in our own blind reactions toward pleasant and unpleasant sensations.

Now, with training, we can see the other side of the coin. We can be aware of our breathing and also of what is happening inside. Whatever it is, breath or sensation, we learn just to observe it without losing our mental balance. We stop reacting and multiplying our misery. Instead, we allow the defilements to manifest and pass away.

fragments a text based upon a talk given by Mr. S.N. Goenka in Berne, Switzerland, continued from the last post, and yet to be continued.

explorers of inner truth

2008-10-02T14:34:00.003-03:00

In India, as well as in other countries, wise saintly persons of the past studied this problem—the problem of human suffering—and found a solution: if something unwanted happens and you start to react by generating anger, fear or any negativity, then, as soon as possible, you should divert your attention to something else. For example, get up, take a glass of water, start drinking—your anger won't multiply; on the other hand, it'll begin to subside. Or start counting: one, two, three, four. Or start repeating a word, or a phrase, or some mantra, perhaps the name of a god or saintly person towards whom you have devotion; the mind is diverted, and to some extent you'll be free of the negativity, free of the anger.

This solution was helpful; it worked. It still works. Responding like this, the mind feels free from agitation. However, the solution works only at the conscious level. In fact, by diverting the attention you push the negativity deep into the unconscious, and there you continue to generate and multiply the same defilement. On the surface there is a layer of peace and harmony, but in the depths of the mind there is a sleeping volcano of suppressed negativity which sooner or later may erupt in a violent explosion.

Other explorers of inner truth went still further in their search and, by experiencing the reality of mind and matter within themselves, recognized that diverting the attention is only running away from the problem. Escape is no solution; you have to face the problem. Whenever negativity arises in the mind, just observe it, face it. As soon as you start to observe a mental impurity, it begins to lose its strength and slowly withers away.

A good solution; it avoids both extremes—suppression and expression. Burying the negativity in the unconscious will not eradicate it, and allowing it to manifest as unwholesome physical or vocal actions will only create more problems. But if you just observe, then the defilement passes away and you are free of it.

excerpt of a text based upon a talk given by Mr. S.N. Goenka in Berne, Switzerland -- to be continued in the next posts.

Photo ©Sean Unruh

soul's horizons

2008-09-30T16:41:00.002-03:00

How boundless might his soul's horizons be,
How vast, yet of what clear transparency.

Matthew Arnold, A Summer Night

you yourself

2008-09-28T15:26:00.003-03:00

You can search through the universe for someone who is more deserving of love and affection than yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anyone in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

Buddha

I thank this photo and quotation to Rick Gunn and his beautiful, heartfelt photos, and inspiring travel journal, to be read at:
http://www.rickgunnphotography.com/project.php

but there indeed it is

2008-09-27T16:34:00.001-03:00

Chandogya Upanishad

There lived once Svetaketu. . . To him his father Uddalaka . . . said: "Svetaketu, go to school; for no one belonging to our race, dear son, who, not having studied, is, as it were, a Brahmin by birth only"

Having begun his apprenticeship when he was twelve years of age, Svetaketu returned to his father, when he was twenty-four, having then studied all the Vedas,conceited, considering himself well-read, and stern.

His father said to him: "Svetaketu, as you are so conceited, considering yourself so well-read and so stern, my dear, have you ever asked for that instruction by which we hear what cannot be heard, by which we perceive what cannot be perceived, by which we know what cannot be known? "

"What is that instruction, Sir?" he asked. . .

"Fetch me . . . a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree."

"Here is one, Sir."

"Break it."

"It is broken, Sir."

"What do you see there?"

"These seeds, almost infinitesimal."

"Break one of them."

"It is broken, Sir."

"What do you see there?"

"Not anything, Sir."

The father said: "My son, that subtle essence which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists.

"Believe it, my son. That which is the subtle essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and you, . . . Svetaketu, are it. "

"Please, Sir, inform me still more," said the son.

"Be it so, my child," the father replied.

"Place this salt in water, and then wait on me in the morning."
The son did as he was commanded.

The father said to him: "Bring me the salt, which you placed in the water last night."

The son having looked for it, found it not, for, of course, it was melted.

The father said: "Taste it from the surface of the water. How is it?"

The son replied: "It is salt."

"Taste it from the middle. How is it?"

The son replied: "It is salt."

"Taste it from the bottom. How is it?"

The son replied: "It is salt."

The father said: "Throw it away and then wait. . .on me.

He did so, but the salt exists forever.

Then the father said: "Here also, in this body, . . . you do not perceive the True, my son; but there indeed it is.

"That which is the subtle essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and you, Svetaketu, are it."

The Upanishads are the principle texts of what is often regarded as the Hindu religion. Compiled between 800 and 500 BC, they are the result of meditations on many of the themes found in the Vedas, but brought to a new philosophical and spiritual level through the introduction of the concept of Brahman or universal spirit (India, the Vedic Era).

India

2008-09-26T10:20:00.002-03:00

magic carpet
flying me
in and out of pain
in and out of bliss
I surrender

what do Hindus teach their children about God?

2008-09-24T13:23:00.001-03:00

In many Hindu families children are taught about one supreme God who is in everything. They are shown a glass of water and told the following story:

Svetaketu always came proudly home from school each day.
One day his father asked him about God but Svetaketu didn’t know anything. His father sent for a glass of water and asked Svetaketu to put some salt in it. The next day he asked where the salt was. Svetaketu could not see the salt but he could taste
it in the water in the glass.
‘That’s a bit like God in the world’, said his father. ‘God is invisible, but is there in everything.’

Photo ©Superhero Journal

when will it ever end?

2008-09-18T14:47:00.001-03:00

To me the goal or destination of a trek, or the spiritual path for that matter, is of secondary importance. Each step, the journey itself, is the interesting part, the important part, the crucial part, the practice. If our mind is in the future, if we are unmindful, careless, any step could mean disaster. Only thinking about the goal will not get you there. It helps, it motivates you, but you have to keep walking. When you are struggling up a steep section, tired and hot, muscles aching, heart pounding, the thought, “When will it end?” is the distant future. It is not real.

Each step is real; the aching of bones, the sweat, the shortness of breath is real, the present moment. Wanting it to end, the jump to the future, is like a mirage; it can bring more suffering. When you finally reach the top and rest a bit, soon the misery of the climb disappears, like the mirage, and the pain is forgotten. You now have the next destination, the path in front of you, until the next up hill. On the Himalayan trails there is always another hill – when will it ever end?

It is important to pick a trail, a destination that is not too easy, which is just beyond our reach, to stretch our limits. Otherwise we will not increase our stamina, develop our strength, or know what is possible, what lies beyond. It is like the carrot and the stick edging the donkey forward. To face our fears, loneliness, to go without our creature comforts, not knowing what is around the corner, stretching the threshold of pain, even to face death. This brings us face to face with our deeper self, to deal with it right there, not avoiding it, not masking over it with superficial amusements that make us feel comfortable.

Choosing a guide, knowing the right path is important in the beginning. It is a necessary help to get our bearings, become familiar with the terrain, and learn how to detect dangers. However, ultimately, especially on the spiritual path, no one can take us there. Moreover, this is where the metaphor breaks down. We have to walk alone, leave our companions behind, because it is an inner journey, not an outer journey; a journey of the mind, and not of flesh; an individual journey, not a group trip. No one can come with us. Everyone must go on their own way according to their karma. Guides only point the way.

The Himalaya are your own mind. When you have traversed the peaks and valleys, going beyond pleasure and pain, gain and loss, like and dislike, explored the caves of sadness, loneliness, fear, unfulfilled hopes, walked the slippery slopes of desire and lust, pride and conceit, and ultimately crossed the glacier of the ego, this is the end of the trail.

Preface from Traversing the Great Himalaya, a Photo Documentary by Yogavacara Rahula, published by Bhavana Society, 2001 -- though the photos in this post are not from the book.

on a trek

2008-09-13T16:31:00.006-03:00

For a Buddhist, spiritual practice means purifying the underlying forces of attachment/greed, aversion/hatred, and the selfish ego/delusion in one’s mind. It is weakening the habitual patterns of clinging to security (as the known), of fearing the unknown, on of protecting the ego’s boundaries. It is also cultivation of compassion and loving kindness for oneself and all beings. I know of no better place to do all that than on the trails of the Himalaya in India.

A Himalayan trek is a metaphor for life itself. On a trek we are searching for a majestic peak or high plateau, a beautiful stream or waterfall, or a shrine or monastery. The destination or goal serves to quench our thirst, our desire. It provides a short respite from the rigors of the trail, a brief “One Night’s Shelter”. Then we have to descend, to move on. We cannot stay there.

Preface from Traversing the Great Himalaya, a Photo Documentary by Yogavacara Rahula, published by Bhavana Society, 2001.

Photo below © Delwa, more from this traveler to be read and seen at http://www.delwa.org/delwa01/ladakh56.html

the law of our being

2008-09-11T16:24:00.002-03:00

There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being.

Mahatma Ghandi

Photo (top) of Ladakh's 16th-century Phyang Monastery and (bottom) Puja call at Ladakh's 15th-century Tikse Monastery ©Steve McCurry/National Geographic; to see more photos please refer to:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/photos/india0611/ladakh/ladakh_gallery.html

to conquer

2008-09-09T16:01:00.001-03:00

It is not the mountains that we conquer, but ourselves.

Sir Edmund Hillary

the same water

2008-09-06T09:20:00.005-03:00

Rain, hail and snow,
Ice too, are set apart,
But when they fall, --
The same water
Of the valley stream.

from Zen and Zen Classics - Volume One by R. H. Blyth, The Hokuseido Press/Heian International, San Francisco, 1982

if you would like to read more excerpts from this book please refer to:
http://home.att.net/~paul.dowling/archive/zen/blyth/blyth-all.htm

Photo: trekking in Ladakh

man's stripe is inside

2008-09-04T07:18:00.000-03:00

The inhabitants of 'Little Tibet," who have turned the wasteland like the elephant's skin into the oasis like a bright green gem. The way that they express time is also peculiar like this: 'after the sun sets,' 'when the sun is suspended on the mountain top,' 'at the singing time of the birds before the sun rises.' Helena Norberg-Hodge, a Swedish linguist, writes in as following:

"The most important thing for Ladakhi people is to build community without avarice and to coexist with nature. They brew the beverage from food left out after a meal, feed the animals wash water, use the animal excrement as compost, and help others after finishing their own work."

Tzering Dolma, a country girl asks the author,
"You said that other people are not happy like us?"

Ladakh lacks a lot of things. It is short of natural resources, oxygen, and water. Nevertheless, they have turned the shortage into abundance by practicing a simple and plain life in insufficiency. So they are poor but their minds are not poor. There is a famous saying in Ladakh: "The tiger's stripe is outside, while man's stripe is inside." It means that one's inside or personality is more important than one's appearance.

excerpet from Delwa's travel journal; more to be read at:
http://www.delwa.org/delwa01/ladakh56.html

Photos: top, fields and mountains around Leh, Ladakh ©Oriental Travels; bottom, young monk ©Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre in Ladakh

use your imagination...

2008-09-02T13:04:00.000-03:00

can you spot me on the terrace shown above, mindfully drinking water (for that is all you should drink here, due to the high altitude...) and looking at the mountains? Or practicing walking meditation in these beautiful gardens? Use your imagination, because that's what I did to get here, at this Shangri-lah on Earth...

if you'd like to see more of Omasila Hotel, please refer to:
http://www.hotelomasila.com/aboutomasila.wdf

I see that instant I fall in love with

2008-09-01T18:01:00.003-03:00

The night is black and the forest has no end;
a million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness,
but where or with whom- of that we are unaware.
But we have this faith- that a lifetime's bliss
will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.
Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs brush us,
pass us, give us delightful shocks.
Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:
whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.
I call that person and cry:
'This life is blest! For your sake such miles have I traversed!'
All those others who come close and
moved off in the darkness -I dont know if they exist or not.

On the nature of love - I see that instant I fall in love with by Rabinder Nath Tagore, translated from Bengali by Ketaki Kushari Dyson from Chaitali (1896)

If you'd like to read more by this author, please refer to:
http://www.poetseers.org/nobel_prize_for_literature/tagore/tagores_poems

Photo: rush hour in central Delhi -- where I am today...

If you'd like to see some more pictures of India and its people (though not the one above) you can check those by Karen Glassford at: http://adventures4god.blogspot.com/2007/08/india-land-bustling-with-beautiful.html

I only observe

2008-08-29T18:51:00.003-03:00

Omou koto
nakute mimashiya
to bakari ni
nochi no koyohi zo
tsuki ni nakinuru

Without a thought,
for a while, I only
observe,
but later this evening
I will shed tears under
the moon.

Rai Shizuko , or Baishi (1760-1842)

print by Terukata Gyokudo

Poem and image taken from one of my favorite blogs, precious Japonisme.

working meditation

2008-08-26T11:21:00.001-03:00

Laundry anguish:
I cannot wash
off the suffering
Our hearts

(A dirty linen
I cannot wash
your heart
so I'll try mine)

before i go out again

2008-08-23T14:33:00.002-03:00

Now that i have entered
this holy place
i must use the sacred medicine
to enlighten my spirit
before i go out again.

taken from Fragrance of Tea Flower, by Sr. Dang Nghiem (December 12, 2005). If you'd like to read more, please refer to:

http://www.deerparkmonastery.org/news/dharmabreeze/fragranceofteaflower.html

Photo ©Deer Park Monastery

drifting

2008-08-18T12:47:00.002-03:00

Petals drop
thoughts and tears
drift.

(Plum Village, Summer 2008)

no trace

2008-08-17T15:46:00.004-03:00

When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

Shunryu Suzuki

Photo: paper lanterns, Plum Village, Summer retreat 2006 ©Denise Kato

http://www.plumvillage.org/