what if …
the understanding I grasp onto within my weltanschauung, in truth, lives within spheres of understanding beyond this worldview and this grasping imprisons with fury.
Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares
I was introduced to the Portuguese word, saudade, which has no immediate English equivalent about 30 years ago. Saudade is a word that feels intimate as it named a life-long companion. It touched upon a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exit, for something other than the present, a turning toward to past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming, a wishfulness.
Over 30 years ago, I met a homeless woman who identified herself as a sundowner. She described how each evening’s sun invited her to settle down along the side of her life’s path so that her journey could begin afresh in the morning sun. She eloquently described an undercurrent of yearning that ebbed and flowed throughout her soul and how, in her past days, she found herself at the mercy of private memories, thoughts, and imaginations and had encountered, time and time again, various degree of discontent that wandered along side her aloneness.
As I heard the suffering within women who story their lives through the multi-colored threads of substance use, I find myself acknowledging a similarity within each of these unique stories with my own metaphysical search for someone, something, or some place that remains beyond the forever next horizon. Each of our unique narratives reveal an unending wandering with satchels of discontent that tell of a spiritual emptiness and an emotional intimacy wit, “a homesickness for a place one knows cannot be.”
Thank you Egídio for your invitation to wander through loneliness.
may you find peace within gratitude.
over the fields of
last night’s snow–
plum fragrance.
~Okano Kin’emon Kanehide*
*cited:
Japanese Death Poems
Yoel Hoffmann
Imagine the dimension of time as a vertical line. Place yourself in the present on that line with the past above you and the future below you. Establish yourself in time. See all your ancestors that have come before you. The youngest generation of your ancestors is your parents. All of them are above you on this line of time. Then below you, see all your dependents, your children, your grandchildren, and all their future descendants. If you have no children, your descendants are the people you have touched in your life, and all the people they in turn influence.
In you are both your blood ancestors and your spiritual ancestors. You touch the presence of your father and mother in each cell of your body. They are truly in you, along with your grandparents and great-grandparents. Doing this, you realize their continuation. You may have thought that your ancestors no longer existed, but even scientist will say that they are present in you, in your genetic heritage, which is in every cell of your body.
Look into a plum tree. In each plum on the tree there is a pit. That pit contains the plum tree and all previous generations of plum tree. The plum pit contains an eternity of plum trees. Inside the pit is an intelligence and wisdom that knows how to become a plum tree, how to produce branches, leaves, flowers, and plums. It cannot do this on its own. It can only do this because it has received the experience and heritage of so many generations of ancestors. You are the same. ~Thich Nhat Hanh (No Death, No Fear, 137-138)
This posting was created in memory of Dustin, Bob, Elberta, Donna, Chris, Larry, Margaret, Thella, John, Clive, and Jeff who all live on within the lives of my beloved.
How invisibly
it changes color
in this world,
the flower
of the human heart.
~Ono no Komachi*
“… our ordinary vision is limited, and…our conventional consensus of reality is not the only version of reality.
The complex multidimensionality of the modern world no doubt contributes to the constructive habit of the mind that, in its attempt to provide meaning, continually rearranges the world to fit individual needs. The failure to recognize the constructive nature of the mind can be a major obstacle to artistry and creativity. Conversely, understanding the constructive nature of the mind and reality can lead the way to Great Understanding in the art of photography and in the art of living.” (61)**
cited:
*The Ink Dark Moon
Trans: Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratant
**Tao of Photography
Philippe L Gross & S.I. Shapiro
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
“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
May I find the Equanimity that will lift a veil of shamed despair and acquaint me to the perceived and perceiver absent of greed, anger, and ignorance.
This journey with saldage has brought me to a place and time in which to unweave and sort through the pseudo-beliefs I have simply, without question, absorbed through the lens of childhood fantasy and comprehension. To begin this process is to reformulate beliefs through a process of mindfulness and analysis and then to know for myself, “These things are bad, blamable, censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill… These things are good, blameless, praised by the wise… These things lead to benefit and happiness.”
It is not an easy undertaking to not simply believe what has been learned within family, school and church as well as conclusions reached through readings. The invitation to not simply follow tradition brings to the surface conflicts with compliance and opposition that come from an avalanche of values and guiding principles that outlines how I understand the roles and expectations of women.
To not adhere to that which was surmised within family stories about an ancestor, who upon seeing a swarm of locust “knelt in his patch of grain and pleaded with his Maker to spare his wheat” and then saw them divide and not damage his remaining crops. Or within the story about the ancestor, who during a trip from New York to England, calmed the seas with a prayer, and while in England, after much fasting and prayer administered to a deaf and dumb boy who was subsequently healed. To not simply believe opens a door of pondering about generations of family members who intimately knew powerlessness and insecurity, who eased their feelings of incompetence through prayer, and whose conceptions blinded them to their neighbors’ plight.
To not simply believe that I must endure suffering is to reject the axiom that there is an absence of fundamental faith and goodness. To not adhere to the assumed abilities of ancestors frees me from the belief that a sincere act of making amends for my sins will open the doors to Shangri-La. To not simply draw upon scripture unbinds me to the shame that I don’t have the faith – even of the size of a mustard seed – to be deeded as “good and without sin” so what I wish for, even that which goes counter to nature’s laws, will be granted. To ease the suffering within discontent is to not simply hold to be true that I am to acquiesce to pain until the final judgment of death, and only then will I be forever at peace, or forever condemned to an existence of even greater suffering.
To not simply believe opens my ears to the incongruence within a belief in an all-knowing presence who, if not validated, punishes, absent of the grace within loving-kindness. To not simply believe brings a compassionate acknowledgment to the painful efforts to sway God into granting me my desires through bargaining, sacrifice, negation, and suffering, and to finally surrender with acceptance to “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To not simply believe sheds light upon the greed, aversion, and delusions that are intertwined into my conception of and relationship with life.
I do hold that my beliefs and the subsequent desire for their illusive promises of validation, forgiveness, or reunification have set me upon an unending path of suffering. These beliefs lead to harm and ill as they are like thorns that tear into my heart. This searing pain releases resentment intertwined with envy, awakens alienation, and denies me the essence of Christ’s wisdom and loving compassion.
Christ stood before self-righteous anger and commanded that only the one without sin was to cast the first stone of punishment and, at another time and in the midst of his own suffering, sought forgiveness for those who “know not what they do.” Within these written words, I hear compassion speaking for the suffering intertwined within anger ungoverned by moral shame and moral dread. Compassion is telling us how suffering, entangled into knots of mental, emotional, and social turmoil, deafens us to our guiding principles and blinds us to the horrors our moral shame will witness as it awakens from darkened ignorance.
The practice of the presence of God as being comparable to that of consciousness finally makes possible “full awareness” applied to every thought, world, and deed. ~ Unknown
Excerpts from B Koeford, A Meditative Journey with Saldage
Delicate … the dance
of light and shadow
between insight and ignorance
in life and death
from suffering to tranquility
May you become acquainted with tranquil single-pointed concentration . . . those who seek wisdom through the lens of tranquility glimpse reality in the same manner as a lighted candle — the light chases away that which is hidden within the shadows of a darken closet. Insight, once risen, shines light into closed hearts and minds and keeps the gloom of ignorance at bay
A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word cairn comes from the Scottish Gaelic: càrn [ˈkʰaːrˠn̪ˠ] (plural càirn [ˈkʰaːrˠɲ]).
Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, they were raised as markers, as memorials and as burial monuments (some of which contained chambers). In the modern era, cairns are often raised as landmarks, especially to mark the summits of mountains. Cairns are also used as trail markers. They vary in size from small stone markers to entire artificial hills, and in complexity from loose conical rock piles to elaborate megalithic structures. Cairns may be painted or otherwise decorated, whether for increased visibility or for religious reasons.
A variant is the inuksuk (plural inuksuit), used by the Inuit and other peoples of the Arctic region of North America.*
*cited: Wikipedia
Video of Erin building a cairn submitted in response to Donna @ WindKisses’ lens-artists challenge: rock your world
a meditative journey 
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