A stick of incense stands by my pillow.
When the lantern dims, I pour some oil.
I add more clothes as the night deepens.
If you don’t mind my bare hospitality,
please keep wandering in.
~Ryokan (K Tanahashi, Sky Above, Great Wind)

A stick of incense stands by my pillow.
When the lantern dims, I pour some oil.
I add more clothes as the night deepens.
If you don’t mind my bare hospitality,
please keep wandering in.
~Ryokan (K Tanahashi, Sky Above, Great Wind)




Elemental — of, relating to, or of the nature of the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, or any one of them…from the Medieval Latin word elementālis, dating back to 1485-95.

My eye for me is a certain power of making contact with things, and not a screen on which they are projected … The other’s gaze transforms me into an object, and mine, him, only if both of us withdraw into the core of our thinking nature [left hemisphere], if we both make ourselves into an inhuman gaze, if each of us feels his actions to be not taken up as understood, but observed as if they were an insect’s. This is what happens, for instance, when I fall under the eyes of a stranger. But even then the objectification of each by the other’s gaze is felt as unbearable only because it takes the place of a possible communication.
~Maurice Merleau-Pontry (cited: Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emmissary, p.166)
leaves of words:
resting here…there, a
still summer.

Bell Deer Mountain
I shake off this sad world,
put it aside,
but, what lies in store for me,
what note will I sound?
~Saigyo (B Watson, Poems of a Mountain Home)


All phenomena of being, since time memorial, are independent of concepts and words. Concepts and words cannot transform them or separate them from their true nature.
~The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (cited: Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Keys, pg. 81)
In response to Musings of a Frequent Flyer, I spent five minutes looking through my camera lens at the various angles of playground equipment. Hope you enjoy!
How have I spent
these many years and months
in this world
where those here even yesterday
are no longer here today?
~Saigyo (B Watson: Poems of a Mountain Home)

Across the face of the field
wilted grasses
darken
the chill clouding-over
of a sudden storm sky
~Saigyo (B Watson: Poems of a Mountain Home)
the rivers have
an ancient darkness…
cuckoo
~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)

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