Someone asked, “what is my true nature?”
If you search for your “true’ nature, you grant the existence of a “false” one.
If you make no attempt to define your nature, you will find nothing in it that is not true.*
*cited:
Japanese Death Poems
Yoel Hoffmann
Is my mind elsewhere
Or has it simply not sung?
Hototogisu*
~Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693)**
*Hototogisu, translated as cuckoo, wood thrush and sometimes nightingale.
The bird’s song is a strong but mournful cry.
It is said to die after singing 8,008 times.
It is also known as the “bird of time,”
“messenger of death” and “bird of disappointed love,”
and flies back and forth from this world to the next.
Confucian axiom: If one’s mind is elsewhere, one will look but not see, listen but not hear
**cited in:
The Classic Tradition of Haiku
Edited by: Faubion Bowers
“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
“And he said:
“Your children are not your children. …
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. …
“You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
“For they have their own thoughts.
“You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. …”*
Images posted in response to Tina’s lens-artists challenge: to be young again.
*cited: Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, pg. 17
“What is the cause of everything? …everything relies on everything else in order to manifest. A flower has to rely on non-flower elements in order to manifest. If you look deeply into the flower, you can recognize non-flower elements. Looking into the flower, you recognize the element sunshine; that is a non-flower element. Without sunshine, a flower cannot manifest. Looking at the flower, you recognize the element cloud; that is a non-flower element. Without clouds, the flower cannot manifest. Other elements are essential, such as minerals, soil, the farmer and so on; a multitude of non-flower elects has come together in order to help the flower manifest.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh, No Fear, No Death
“Reachable, near and not lost, those remained amid the losses this one thing: language.
“It, the language remained, not lost, yes in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its wounded wordlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and giveback no words for that which happened.” ~Paul Celan* (cited: V. Schwarcz, Bridge Across Broken Time p. 85)
*Poet, translator, essayist, and lecturer, influenced by French Surrealism and Symbolism. Celan was born in Cernăuţi, at the time Romania, now Ukraine, he lived in France, and wrote in German. His parents were killed in the Holocaust; the author himself escaped death by working in a Nazi labor camp. “Death is a Master from Germany”, Celan’s most quoted words, translated into English in different ways, are from the poem ‘Todesfuge’ (Death Fugue). Celan’s body was found in the Seine river in late April 1970, he had committed suicide.
“When old age comes, whether in light or in dark, a person discovers that he knows no one. There hasn’t been time …” *
*cited: Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams, pg 85
The child claps his hands
playing alone, happily,
under a festive tree ~Issa*
Egidio invites photographers to share photographs that are associated with songs. That is, “what music do you hear in your photos?”
I thought to share this masterpiece of abstract art created by a very quiet and thoughtful artist.
While photographs do not bring to mind music, they often speak to me either through haiku or a haiku accompanies me during a photo walk. There are associations with images and scent as well as music and memory.
Music seems more abstract than other art forms because it represents emotional states, symmetry and repetition, and other intangibles. But just because you can’t see or touch these things, doesn’t make them any less real. In preliterate societies, music was probably one of the best methods for storing and conveying complex stories and information.***
One of the best ways to understand how the over-all space of creative expression reflects its parts is to imagine yourself inside the space of the artwork…select a place within the composition where you would like to locate yourself for a few minutes of contemplation. …imagine…passing through different areas of the artwork…feel…energetic patterns. (152)****
*cited: The Spring of My life
Trans: Sam Hamill
**used with permission by the artist
***The Ethan Hein Blog (www.ethanhein,com)
**** McNiff, Shawn
Trust the Process
green moss–
all the way to my lap
spring’s rainbow ~Issa*
Leica V-Lux 5: f/4 1/2500 s 10.1 mm 125 ISO
*cited: http://www.haikuguy.com “love note to Planet Earth. Spring’s dazzling colors touch and include Issa. He gazes and realizes: I am (we are) part of this glory!f”
“As the ink flows onto the page,
each word creating and tumbling into another,
she wonders aloud to no one in particular,
‘are these sleeping memories
left in the shadows of grief …
writing on and on
this tale and that …
moving my pen across the page ...
as if a bridge to yesterday?'”
Even into the mind always clouded with grief,
There is cast the reflection of the bright moon.
~Lady Sarashina ( Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)
a meditative journey 
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