art

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: letter x

The wind whistles in the bamboo

and the bamboo dances.

When the wind stops,

the bamboo grows still.

A silver bird

flies over the autumn lake.

When it has passed,

the lake’s surface does not try

to hold on to the image of the bird.

~Poems by Vietnamese Dhyana Master Hai (Ocean of Fragrance)

Cited:  Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of The Buddha’ Teachings

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Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge

Umwelt

The depths of the hearts
Of humankind cannot be known.
But in my birthplace
The plum blossoms smell the same
As in the years gone by.

~Ki no Tsurayuki

shapes-22webshapes-23web

The video below was created by Yoshiyuki Katayama and cited at Aeon.com.  Please gift yourself with this amazing visual journey with nature.

A term introduced by the Baltic German biologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1909, Umwelt refers to an organism’s internal and limited perceptual experience of the external world. This stunning experimental exploration of the concept from the Japanese artist Yoshiyuki Katayama contrasts flowers blooming at time-lapse speeds with insects and spiders atop them, captured in real time. As these two organisms move at what appear to be similar speeds, the viewer is reminded of the disparate timescales on which they usually operate, and the very different evolutionary goals that they pursue even as they interact with one another.


Umwelt from Yoshiyuki KATAYAMA on Vimeo.

consciousness in a …

May I find the Equanimity
that will lift this veil of shamed despair
and acquaint me to the perceived and perceiver
absent of greed, anger, and ignorance.

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When we say, ‘I can see my consciousness in the flower.’ it means we can see the cloud, the sunshine, the earth, and the minerals in it. But how can we see our consciousness in a flower? The flower is our consciousness. It is the object of our perception. It is our perception. To perceive means to to perceive something. Perception means the coming into existence of the perceiver and the perceived. The flower that we are looking at is part of our consciousness. The idea that our consciousness is outside of the flower has to be removed. It is impossible to have a subject without an object. It is impossible to remove one and retain the other.

~Thich Nhat Hanh (The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, p.53)

Working homelessness in America…a glaring manifestation of income disparity.

white waves

Over the wide sea
As I sail and look around,
It appears to me
That the white waves, far away,
Are the ever shining sky.

~Fujiwara no Tadamichi (1097-1164)

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Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin : Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics.
Think about it. Will you think about it?  ~The Graduate