Dear Subscribers,
I just added a photograph to my last post just so you know. Some might say 100 is a small number of followers/subscribers after having been going at it for over ten years. And sometimes I think that too. However now thinking about it I tend not to shout so using a regular voice, as I intend to do, means I tend towards not making a whole lot of noise in this Internet That’s fine by me.
And I have been thinking of doing a newsletter for subscribers. More photographs, more details about walking and getting out and about. A ‘thought for the day’ kind of piece – on video. One thing at a time though.
It’s not that my tinitus let’s up, or the cars on the road or the sound of the fridge, thoughts or the sensation of cold feet. Far from it. Just sometimes when the imperative to get going, move on, act, take action gives a way to a simpler moment. A few moments. Time and it’s passing fades, ceases it’s relentless clamour.
Before my eyes – as if a photograph. Knowing all the while lurks the imperitive, the call to action. Knowing some how, all the while, the content of the photograph/life/living it is insubstantial. Ephemeral. So what is the ground of movement in the moment of writing, walking, saving the world, relieving suffering? Preparing lunch?
The ground? Thundering Silence – in the midst of saying no to holding on – to ANY (separate) thing. We could call that non thinginess. In Buddhism we have a word for that. Sunyata.
Act as if
what you do
makes a
difference.
It does.
William James
Quite so. And refraining from ‘doing’ makes a profound difference! I’m thinking of offering Spiritual Merit here. An act, if you could call it that, which simply acknowledges we are not separate beings scattered randomly around the world. That being so how could one not open ones heart in compassion. Being still within the truth is not so easy. Still does not mean stationary.
This is an art installation in an Exeter park. Each figure is different, there are 19,240 of them representing a man killed on the first day of the battle. Unbelievably moving. A
Thanks to long time reader, Sangha Friend and all together wise person for sending in this photograph. Often one sees these mass memorials, fields full of white crosses and the like. This installation is obviously different and I can understand how moving it was/is to behold. It brings home that these men where individuals. All different. All with unique (just like us) histories and attributes. Unbelievable suffering. Let us remember them.
This sculpture called Water Cut suits the mood of the morning, I find it uplifting and remember well the day I hiked up to see it high above the River Eden in the Mallerstang Valley in Eastern Cumbria. June 30th 2013.
The space carved between the two vertical pillars creates the shape of a meandering river in the sky and provides a ‘window’ onto the real river in the valley below. It also symbolises the power of the river Eden cutting through the rock on its journey through East Cumbria and our own human journeys through the rural landscape and through life.
Rivers?
held in a direction
by the banks
in dynamic opposition.
A positive thing.
Uh! And it is raining again – those rivers will rise and run fast. Let’s see now, the weather forecast for the rest of the week. Sunshine and showers it is.
Practice Within The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives
