If one’s mind is elsewhere,
one will look but not see,
listen but not hear.
~Confucian axion (cited: F Bowers, The Classic of Tradition of Haiku)
landscape
silent sunday
Nikon D750 f/10 1/50s 24mm !SO 100
tuesday photo challenge: stones
Stone: Symbol of being, of cohesion, of harmonious reconciliation with one’s self. The stone when whole tells of unity and strength; when shattered it symbolizes psychic disintegration.
Seven Stones:
- The first stone: become acquainted with the intrinsic power within generosity, gratitude, compassion, loving-kindness, equanimity, and sympathetic joy. Use their inherent strength to abandon detrimental mental qualities and experience the subsequent easing of suffering.
- The second stone: familiarize yourself with the inherent strength within intention; that is, each morning define for yourself a small goal to strive for that day with the knowledge that the characteristics of each daily intention accumulates and formulates the meaning and purpose of your life.
- The third stone: introduce yourself to the innate vitality of acquaintance with the knowledge of and experience with a presence that transcends your ego and nourishes your divine “I”-in-self.
- The fourth stone: feel the influence within the natural aspect of prayer that releases the consequential merit of your actions, speech, and thoughts to the benefit all living beings.
- The fifth stone: know the innate authority of remorse that directs you to acknowledge when specific action, speech, and thought are incongruent with personal moral and guiding principles, to set forth the intention to not repeat the offense, and to release detrimental thoughts, including regret, shame, guilt, resentment, justifications, rationalizations. Feel the release of being freed from an abusive ego and to a self-centered attitude that has the inclination to neglect others.
- The sixth stone: gift yourself the eloquence within simple acts of kindness absent of expectation: release your merit; share your talent, expertise, or knowledge; surrender your wants for another’s need; greet each person with a half smile.
- The seventh stone: be attentive to the influence present within a daily mindfulness practice that acquaints you to a state of tranquil single-pointed concentration.
(cited: Meditative Journey with Saldage, B Catherine Koeford)
wpc: elemental
Elemental — of, relating to, or of the nature of the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, or any one of them…from the Medieval Latin word elementālis, dating back to 1485-95.
wpc: textures
Across the face of the field
wilted grasses
darken
the chill clouding-over
of a sudden storm sky
~Saigyo (B Watson: Poems of a Mountain Home)
wpc: satisfaction
Old Fall River Road, a motor nature trail, is an auto route in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Forest that travels through the park’s wilderness to Fall River Pass, 11,796 feet above sea level. This road follows a course traveled long ago by Indian hunters in search of game and passes the site of a labor camp which housed state convicts who built a three-mile section of the 11 mile-long road with nothing more than hand tools.
The graveled one-way road which rarely exceeds 14 feet in width was largely built out from the hillside. In the steepest places, multiple switchbacks are stacked one above the other. What periodically blinded me to the absolute beauty of montane and subalpine forests, wild flowers, water falls, and alpine landscape along this narrow and curved road was the absence of any guard rails between me and the road-snuggling, never-ending, deep valleys.
the top of the world
At one point I found myself pulled back into memories of those Sunday drives through Rabbit Ears Pass where my parents, both deaf, would chat away with each other–eyes off the road–about the beauty around them…in sign language. Fear began to subside as we moved above the timber line to the Alpine Visitors Center. This Center, the highest facility of its kind in the National Park Services, offers a deep satisfaction and gratitude to the national park community for offering a road trip to the birthplace of glaciers that once worked they way up and down the mountain valleys and the Never Summer Wilderness where the temperature was 60 degrees…30 degrees less than the summer we escaped from earlier that day.
wpc: transient
this rain
a greeting card from heaven
midsummer heat.
~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)
What are the various conditions—past and present, known and unknown—that come together to create raindrops? Scientists have suggested that the interactions between water vapor, dust particles, and wind turbulence within clouds create millimeter-sized droplets which are heavy enough to begin their descent towards earth. And in the process of falling, the droplets accumulate more and more moisture, becoming the raindrops we see on the ground.
This scientific explanation of how raindrops form invites contemplation of the prior conditions that create vapor, dust, and wind. Each of these transient phenomenon is a telling of the ongoing weaving and unweaving of interconnected threads creating the various phenomena we experience within each given moment.
This weaving and unweaving of threads is noted by Thich Nhat Hanh, “This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. This is born, because that is born. This dies, because that dies.”
thursday’s special: portrait vs landscape
on horseback
making a silent bow…
thin mist
~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)
On an afternoon walk, we came upon an end-of-school celebration at a local park. As I wandered about the carnival setting, memories of past transitions that included a sense of freedom came to mind. Freedom to play, to explore, to be… My summers were a time in which I was allowed to roam over hills and through meadows, to swim in rivers and creeks, and to reenact storybook characters. No television, no internet, no social media…just freedom to play in an landscape that extended far beyond the horizon.
jump on over to Lost in Translation to participate
thursday’s special: unfocused
somewhere in multiple layers of perspective is…a truth.
A multiple exposure image submitted in response to Lost in Translation’s challenge.
weekly photo challenge: resilient
They ask me where’s the sense
on jasper mountains?
I laugh and don’t reply,
in heart’s own quiet:
Peach petals float their streams
away in secret
To other skies and earths
than those of mortals
~Li Po*
Resilient: multiple exposure images of the ever-changing landscape along Hwy. 287 between Laramie, Wyoming and Fort Collins, Colorado in combination with Li Po’s poem, In the Mountains: A reply to the Vulgar” reflect the resilience of time and words.
*cited:
Li Po and Tu Fu
A Cooper
weekly photo challenge: local
Within the local Rocky Mountains, memories of my childhood slumber. A drive from eastern Colorado to the western slope on Interstate 70 will awaken memories of Sunday drives over the Rockies’s treacherous passes made even more perilous with my parents in front speaking with each other and every so often to one of us four children in the back…in sign language…which requires, far way too many moments, eyes diverted from the narrow and curved roadways bordered by sudden falloffs that disappeared into deep valleys. Yet, again and again my heart was captured and my anxiety abated by the beauty of nature forever changing within the movement of days and seasons.
Seeing Differently: 8th of 15 images
…
It is more important
To see the simplicity
To realize one’s true nature
To cast off selfishness
And temper desire.
~The Tao-te Ching By Lao-tzu
a gift from a predawn rainfall…
water drops on the top of a well-waxed automobile…
submitted in response to Robyn’s Seeing Differently challenge
a meditative journey 
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