Buddhism

life…manifesting again and again

do you also miss

your mother?

cicada ~Issa*

mom

Tulip

In Thich Nhat Hanh”s book, No Death No Fear,  he shares a personal experience associated with the passing away of his mother.

“The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, ‘A  serious misfortune of my life has arrived.’  I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam … I dreamed of my mother. …When I woke up…I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. …Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet…wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as ‘my’ feet were actually ‘our’ feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.

When you lose a loved one, you suffer. But if you know how to look deeply, you have a chance to realize that his or her nature is truly the nature of no birth, no death. There is a manifestation and there is the cessation of manifestation in order to have another manifestation.

…If you can stop and look deeply, you will be able to recognize your beloved one manifesting again and again in many forms. You will again embrace the joy of life.” (pp. 4-5)

In remembrance of my mother’s birthday…who passed away April 19, 2016.

*cited: http://www.haikuguy

anxiety’s blindness

…

Every day my anxiety grew deeper,

until it enveloped me so thickly

that I could see nothing.

Alone in an illimitable desert

I wept hopelessly, as if in a nightmare in dawn

where the open mouth blue sky wept with me.

…

~Nakamura Chio*

beauty

my gift to you today…awakening seeds of calmness… right diligence

*cited:

Women Poets of Japan

K Rexroth &  I Atsumi

seeing differently: 4th of 15

Jung describes synchronicity as a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved. …The critical factor is the meaning, the subjective experience that comes to the person: events are connected in a meaningful way, that is, events of the inner and outer world, the invisible and the tangible, the mind and the physical universe. This coming together at the right moment can happen only without the conscious intervention of the ego. …it is as though the psyche had its own secret design…

~The Essence of Jung Psychology and Tibetan Buddhism, Radmila Moacanin

windowwindow6

I find myself drawn to photograph people who seemingly are within their own worlds as they wander, interact, mingle within the public realm.  Yet, sometimes the eye is drawn towards the amazing abstract paintings light creates within the window canvas.

Seeing Differently is an October challenge proposed by Robyn.

seeing differently: 2nd of 15

“We may speak of conditions and consequences as though they were things, but if we look more closely they turn out to be processes with no independent reality. The harshness of a barbed remark that haunts us for days is no more than a brief instance isolated from a torrent of events. Yet it stands out in the mind’s eye as something intrinsically real and apart. This habit of isolating things leads us to inhabit a world in which the gaps between them come absolute.”

~ Buddhism without Beliefs, Stephen Batchelor

sittingdown

Seeing things a bit different during the recent “tour de corgi” by viewing events unfold with the camera at ground level…my 2nd image submitted in response to Robyn’s  photo challenge.

autumn’s messenger

What you want to acquire, you should dare to acquire by any means.  What you want to see, even though it is with difficulty, you should see.  You should not let it pass, thinking there will be another chance to see it or to acquire it. It is quite unusual to have a second chance to materialize your desire.

~Yosa Buson*

*cited:

Haiku Master Buson

Y Sawa & E Shiffert

 

 

spectators

“… the present situation [is] the fruition of former choices…engage it as the arena for what is to come. …embrace the ambiguity of a present that is simultaneously tied to an irrevocable past and free for an undetermined future.*

spectators

*cited:

Buddhism without Beliefs

Stephen Batchelor

pg. 47

at last free…

At last free,

at last I am a woman free!

No more tied to the kitchen,

stained amid the stained pots,

no more bound to the husband

who thought me less

than the shade he wove with his hands.

No more anger, no more hunger,

I sit now in the shade of my own tree.

Meditating thus, I am happy, I am serene.

                                                                            ~Sumangalamata*

oldtownshadows 1

*”Sumangala’s Mother,” the wife of a maker of hats and shade-umbrellas, was a member of the earliest community of women followers of the Buddha.

cited:

Women in Praise of the Sacred

Ed: Jane Hirshfield