Monday morning with Thich Nhat Hanh

oolongteathy“…you cannot know how many people your words, actions and thoughts have touched.

When I make a pot of oolong tea, I put tea leaves into the pot and pour boiling water on them. Five minutes later there is tea to drink. When I drink it, oolong tea is going into me. If I put in more hot water, making a second pot of tea, the tea from those leaves continues to go into me. After I poured out all the tea, what will be left in the pot is just the spent tea leaves. The leaves that remain are only a very small part of the tea. The tea that goes into me is a much bigger part of the tea. It is the richest part.

We are the same; our essence has gone into our children, our friends and the entire universe. We have to find ourselves in those directions and not in the spent tea leaves. I invite you to see yourself reborn in forms that you say are not yourself. You have to see your body in what is not your body. This is called your body outside of your body.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh (No Death, No Fear, pp. 119-120)

lens-artists: people here, there & everywhere

People … communicating through their silence … speaking through through their nonverbal actions

Issa speaking through time through his poetry:

people are people
I am me…
in my cool house ~Issa*

Travels and Trifles’ lens-artists challenge: people here, there, and everywhere

*cited: http://www.haikuguy.com

life’s passages … 72

O for a friend–that we might see and listen together! 
O the beautiful dawn in the mountain village!– 
The repeated sound of cuckoos near and far away.~The Sarashina Diary (1009-1059)*

*cited: Trans: A S Omori & K Dot, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

Leica V-Lux 5: f/4 …. 1/125 s … 146 mm … 640 ISO

life’s passages … 71

saturday morning with Kahlil Gibran

“Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.

… Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was often times filled with your tears.

… The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

…Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

… Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at stand still and balanced.” …*

*cited: Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1973. pp 29-30

Leica V-Lux 5, f/4 … 1/60 s … 32.65 mm … 125 ISO

life’s passages … 68

winterwalk

Nikon D750… f/1.8 1/800s 35mm 200 ISO

“FRIDAY MORNING, 9 O’CLOCK. People complain about how dark it is in the mornings. But this is often the best time of my day, when the dawn peers grey and silent into my pale windows. Then my bright little table lamp becomes a blazing spotlight and floods over the big black shadow of my desk. … This morning I am wonderfully peaceful. Just like a storm that spent itself. I have noticed that this always happens following days of intense inner striving after clarity, birth pangs with sentences and thoughts that refuse to be born and make tremendous demands on you. Then suddenly it drops away, all of it, and a benevolent tiredness enters the brain, then everything feels calm again …”

cited: Trans: Arno Pomerans, An Interrupted Life The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, pg 69.