nature

cee’s black & white photo challenge: patterns

their traveling hats
looking small…
mist
~Issa (www.haiku.guy)

brendakofford_emigrate4web

emigrate IIII   Nikon D750   f/3.3   1/1,000   40mm   

Hop on over to  Cee’s Photography to join this week’s black and white photo challenge.

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a flower is not a flower

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Aryeah Kaplan wrote that when one is in a meditative state, one has obtained the ability to turn off faint after-images that are constantly with us and interfere with seeing objects with total clarity. He noted that when one is able “to turn off the spontaneous self-generated images . . . the beauty of the flower . . . seen in these higher states of awareness is indescribable [and] appears to radiate beauty.

~Aryeah, Kaplan, Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide, p.9

wordless wed

A flower is not a flower.  It is made only of non-flower elements–sunshine, clouds, time, space, earth, minerals, gardeners, and so on. A true flower contains the whole universe. If we return any one of these non-flower elements to its source, there will be no flower. That is why we can say, “A rose is not a rose. That is why it is an authentic rose.” We have to remove our concept of rose if we want to touch the real rose.

~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, p. 129

 

deconstruction2

…when we hold a rose we see that it is composed of multiple elements, some tangible – leaves, stem, thorns, petals, stamens – and others intangible – scent, color, memories. If you were to remove any of these constituent parts, would you find an entity know as “rose”? As we are unable to find the rose in the absence of any one of these parts, we are also unable to find an enduring solid rose in any one of these elements.

~B Catherine Koeford, A Meditative Journey with Saldage, pp152-153

thursday’s special: pick a word in february – y3

For the month of February Lost in Translation’s challenge is to match one or more images with five words:  innate, protuberant, rectangular, interspersed, and fluorescent.  Four of the five words are illustrated within these goat’s beard images while two of the three are rectangular.

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wpc: beloved

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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. 

plums

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)

baseballcaps3

This posting  was created in memory of Dustin, Bob, Elberta, Donna, Chris, Larry, and Margaret who all live on within the lives of my beloved.

Umwelt

The depths of the hearts
Of humankind cannot be known.
But in my birthplace
The plum blossoms smell the same
As in the years gone by.

~Ki no Tsurayuki

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The video below was created by Yoshiyuki Katayama and cited at Aeon.com.  Please gift yourself with this amazing visual journey with nature.

A term introduced by the Baltic German biologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1909, Umwelt refers to an organism’s internal and limited perceptual experience of the external world. This stunning experimental exploration of the concept from the Japanese artist Yoshiyuki Katayama contrasts flowers blooming at time-lapse speeds with insects and spiders atop them, captured in real time. As these two organisms move at what appear to be similar speeds, the viewer is reminded of the disparate timescales on which they usually operate, and the very different evolutionary goals that they pursue even as they interact with one another.


Umwelt from Yoshiyuki KATAYAMA on Vimeo.

a photo study: lines

This week my year-long commitment to study various elements of photography composition introduced me to lines: horizontal, vertical, diagonal, organic, and implied. Ted Forbes  (The Art of Photography) wrote that while lines don’t actually exist in nature they are most likely the most basic element of visual composition. He further noted:

Lines serve many purposes in visual composition. They can divide the composition, they can direct the viewers eye, they can define shapes and they can make a statement to the feel or interpretation of the image by the viewer. Line’s speaking to the feel of a composition is extremely important.

horizontal

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vertical

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diagonal

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organic

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implied

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After this week, I am finding myself wondering about leading and curving lines as well  finding myself in a bit of muddy water in regards to the differences between lines and shapes.  Am I overthinking?

Would love to hear your thoughts and please feel free to join in.

To sum up this week here is Ted Forbes’,  Photography Composition: Line.

consciousness in a …

May I find the Equanimity
that will lift this veil of shamed despair
and acquaint me to the perceived and perceiver
absent of greed, anger, and ignorance.

brendakofford_dandelionprojlinesweb

When we say, ‘I can see my consciousness in the flower.’ it means we can see the cloud, the sunshine, the earth, and the minerals in it. But how can we see our consciousness in a flower? The flower is our consciousness. It is the object of our perception. It is our perception. To perceive means to to perceive something. Perception means the coming into existence of the perceiver and the perceived. The flower that we are looking at is part of our consciousness. The idea that our consciousness is outside of the flower has to be removed. It is impossible to have a subject without an object. It is impossible to remove one and retain the other.

~Thich Nhat Hanh (The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, p.53)

Working homelessness in America…a glaring manifestation of income disparity.

manifest

 

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Before its so-called birth, this goats beard already existed in other forms – clouds, sunshine, seeds, soil, and many other elements. Rather than birth and rebirth it is more accurate to say, “manifestation and re-manifestation”.  It’s  so-called birthday is really a day of its re-manifestation. It has already been here in various forms, and now it has made an effort to re-manifest.

When conditions are no longer sufficient and a plant ceases to manifest, we say it has died, but that is not correct either. Its constituents have merely transformed themselves into other elements.