…in order to know we must trust our ancestors – trust them deeply. Spinoza points out the fact that our knowledge of parentage and the date of our birth is, in fact, what he calls ‘knowledge by hearsay’.*
*cited:
The Bodhisattva’s Brain
Owen Flanagan
Hum … window shopping. It has been a long time. I do miss those days walking about Old Town, watching people stroll about, listening to a shopper play a public piano (Piano About Town art project), governing the impulse to buy, sitting out doors with a cappuccino, and most of all, walking about with camera in hand.
Why not join The World as I see it’s lens-artists challenge: window shopping
sunday morning with Thich Nhat Hanh
‘… the flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.
A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself, The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.
The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life
Zepher Richard Lee
The depth 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*
*cited:
the lantern blown out —
the sound of the wind
through the leaves ~Shiki*
*cited: J Hardy, Haiku Poetry Ancients & Modern
rocks and wood – front porch, light and shadow
rocks and water – Big Thompson Canyon, long exposure
images submitted for Dawn’s Monochrome Madness theme challenge: rocks
If I should live long,
Then perhaps the present days
May be dear to me,
Just as past time filled with grief
Comes quietly back in thought.
~Fujiwara no Kiyosuke
Standing at this Threshold
With uncertainty, I question:
What is it that I seek?
Protection? Compassion? Acceptance? Forgiveness? Completion?
Who is it that I beckon?
A father? A mother? A sister? A brother? A companion? A child? A god?
To be? To endure? To offer? To embrace? To validate?
An intentional presence that is drawn upon
A place and time of shadows, myths, and dreams?
Birthed within a family?
Matured within a relationship?
Nourished within a community?
Where the Stillness within Silence,
Affirms the exchange of life’s giving and taking,
Embraces the connection of life’s emotional threads, and
Observes the interdependence of life with non-judgmental awareness,
Yet, knows of a united oneness with another that can not be?
Since it can not be, do I yearn
To know integration through the formation of thought;
To see clarity through the flowing of ink; and
To feel completion through the act of creating?
And then, finally, within the stillness of silence,
I befriend
An internal companion with whom
There is an honoring of the who and what of which I am;
A woman, a daughter, a sister, a niece, a wife, a mother, an aunt, a grandmother, a great-grandmother.
I touch
With reverence the presence of all that was, is, and will be.
I release
The seeking, the beckoning, the yearning to the Winds of Change.
I with uncertainty, Step over this Threshold
Foreseeing a return
~bckofford
Creating sound within the frozen moments of a photograph – introduced by Ted Forbes in his discussions of rhythm and tempo.
Rhythm I – all around us are shapes that are pretty basic and similar to each other. We will see them repeating at regular intervals within nature, design, works of art, architecture, and photography
Rhythm II – the primary characteristic of rhythm is predictability and order.
Tempo – the means by which we display speed, movement, as well as the passing of time all within a frozen moment.
Have you heard the silence within a snow storm?
Sending gratitude to Wind Kisses for this week’s Lens-artists challenge: sound
his traveling hat
looking small…
mist ~Issa*
“his traveling hat.” The hat in question is a kasa: umbrella-hat. I picture Issa watching travelers departing in the early morning–perhaps from an inn. As their bodies blend in with the spring mist, all he can see now are the outlines of their umbrella-hats growing smaller and smaller. In this early haiku he shows that he has already mastered the art of using simple observation to suggest depths of meaning and feeling. Like Issa, we shall miss those who go before us, fading into nothing.
*cited: haikuguy.com
Day by day, day by day, and day by day,
quietly in the company of children I live,
In my sleeves, tiny embroidered balls, two or three.
Useless, intoxicated, in this peaceful spring.~Ryokan*
*cited:
Sky Above, Great Wind
K Tanahashi
I was a child,
Nostalgia seemed a small stamp:
I was here…
My mother was there.
When I grew up
Nostalgia became a ticket:
I was here…
My bride was there.
Years later,
Nostalgia was a little tomb:
I was outside…
My mother was inside.
And now,
My nostalgia is a shallow strait:
I am at here…
The mainland is there.
~ Yu Guang Zhong
“The Chinese expression for “nostalgia” is xiangchou, literally “village sadness.” …xiangchou describes the grief that accompanies the traveler who cannot find a way back to the home village…[it] is not a geographical predicament but a spiritual state of being. First he finds himself outside the mother as a tiny emblem of apartness, then he is the man who contemplates her tomb. The shallow waters of the Taiwan straits are, similarly, not only a spatial divide between the island and the mainland but a reminder of the longing for, and the impossibility of going back to, ancestral roots.” *
*cited: V Schwarcz (Bridge Across Broken Time)
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