leaf

weekly photo challenge: cover art

dew-laden,

it falls without wind–

a single leaf.

            ~Gyojo*

photochallengewaterway2

to view additional images submitted for Pete Rosos’ challenge or “to dig a new creative well and have fun while doing it” visit The Daily Post.

*cited:

Haiku before Haiku

Steven Carter

Weekly Photo Challenge: A Day in My Life

Is my mind elsewhere

Or has it simply not sung?

Hototogisu

~Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693)*

creating images

Weekly Photo Challenge: A Day in My Life. Another multi-photo challenge! Make sure you include picture captions to explain to people what they’re seeing, and experiment with the tiled galleries.

*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

autumn remains

Seeing our finger,

hearing a frog jump into the water,

experiencing the sunrise,

washing one’s face in the early morning –

anything will serve as a medium of realization if the mind is serene ~ Robert Aitken, A Zen Wave

autumn remains

If you stay at a place where a feeling of loneliness

[or sadness, detachment, voidness] comes,

the contemplative absorption arises in us ~Paltrul Rimpoche

new year’s eve

leaf in infancy l

leaf in infancy l

leaf in infancy ii

leaf in infancy ii

You can learn about the pine only from the pine, or about the bamboo only from bamboo.  When you see an object, you must leave your subjective pre-occupation with yourself; otherwise you impose yourself on the object, and do not learn.  The object and yourself must become one, and from that feeling of oneness issues your poetry.  However well phrased it may be, if your feeling is not natural—if the object and our self are separate—then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit. ~ Basho*

On New Year’s Day

each thought a loneliness

as winter dusk descends ~Basho

Along my journey

through this transitory world,

new year’s housecleaning ~Basho

*cited in Issa’s The Year of My life.  Trans: Nobuyuki Yuasa