Tag Archives: zen

SPEAK TO US OF BEAUTY

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  • And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
  •    And he answered:
  •    Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
  •    And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?

  •    The aggrieved and the injured say, “Beauty is kind and gentle.
  •    Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.”
  •    And the passionate say, “Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
  •    Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.”

  •    The tired and the weary say, “Beauty is of soft whisperings.  She speaks in our spirit.
  •    Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.”
  •    But the restless say, “We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
  •    And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.”

  •    At night the watchmen of the city say, “Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.”
  •    And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, “We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.”

  •    In winter say the snow-bound, “She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.”
  •    And in the summer heat the reapers say, “We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.”

  •    All these things have you said of beauty,
  •    Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
  •    And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
  •    It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
  •    But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
  •    It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
  •    But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
  •    It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
  •    But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

  •    People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
  •    But you are life and you are the veil.
  •    Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
  •    But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

-Kahlil Gibran.  The Prophet

FIELD NOTES
ISO: 50 @ 1.60 Seconds
24mm @ F/13


NATURE – WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

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Last week I received an email informing me that I was a finalist in an outdoor photography contest, and that they needed the high-resolution image file along with some other information.  Included in this, was the question: why is nature important?  Of course I know why nature is important to me, but I pondered the question further as I was driving up Haleakala to go backpacking overnight at Holua camp, inside the crater.  I was having this overnight getaway primarily for what nature offers me, peace and solitude.  As I made the couple hour drive to the trail head, I listened to Eckhart Tolle’s Stillness Speaks, and my thoughts went back to this question when Eckhart spoke about nature, as one of his topics.  Here are some of his thoughts, that resonated deeply with me:

NATURE

“We depend on nature for not only our physical survival, we also need nature to show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.  We got lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating – lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems.  We have forgotten what rocks, plants and animals still know.  We have forgotten how to be.  To be still.  To be ourselves.  To be where life is – here and now.

“Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking and to some extent, participate in the state of connectedness with being in which everything natural still exists.  To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness.  Something of its essence then transmits itself to you.  You can sense how still it is, and in doing so, the same stillness arises within you.  You sense how deeply it rests in being, completely at one with what it is, and where it is.  In realizing this, you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.”

From Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle