Yes indeed this area is aptly named the Green Heart of The Netherlands. This morning after coffee with apple cake my host and I went to a near by nature reserve to water-bird-watch and walk part of the Green Heart Way. That’s a long distance path – and very green as you can see from The photographs.
And Happy Buddha’s Birthday. Often called Wesak.
The flatlands in The Netherlands have a charm and feel impossible to convey in pictures or words. I think those qualities are as much to do with the people of this country as the lands. But perhaps that is true of any country.
Is it the land that shapes the people or the other way around? And on a different level, how much does the space we live in shape us. That probably include influences left behind by previous occupants. Like a perfume that lingers and eventually disperse.
Dutch perfume is gentle yet strong with highlights of lapping water! Put all together, most charming.
I am still limping along with on-line activity. Wondering at how that all shapes us! And to what extent.
Jade Mountains has suffered a serious security breach. So unfortunately I am no longer able to post except via email from my phone.
Please check in from time to time. Hopefully help will come to sort out the whole thing eventually. In the mean time posts will necessarily be brief and most likely will include photographs.
This photograph was taken this morning at a garden center in the Green Heart of the Netherlands. That’s close to Utrecht.
These past days, or is weeks now, I’ve had the space and opportunity to do some spiritual reading. This book fell off the shelf at me: Visions of Awakening Space and Time – Dogen and the Lotus Sutra by Taigen Dan Leighton. Zen Master Dogen quotes from the Lotus Sutra regularly in the Shobogenzo and clearly he holds this sutra in high esteem. For example it was Dogen, apparently, who added The Lotus Sutra at the end of the recitation of the Ten Buddhas which is spoken during formal meals and during a number of other ceremonies we do. The Lotus Sutra is included as a Buddha.
A few weeks ago while walking in the Lake District a woman asked about how I regarded the ‘flowery language’ of the Lotus Sutra and to be honest I’d never really applied myself to thinking about it. Off the top of my head I’d said I regarded such writing as helping the reader/listener to expand into a wider and deeper frame of mind, beyond the opposites, from where we are able to receive the teaching that follows. From my recent reading I understand the language of the Sutra and also the language of Dogen and where our Soto Zen emphasis of locating ‘practice’ in everyday living comes from. I’m so grateful for the chance to study a little.
Here is a verse Dogen wrote which appears in the last volume of Eihei Koroku (talks given to his monastic community). This verse is the first in a series called Fifteen Verses on Dwelling in the Mountains.
How delightful, mountain dwelling so solitary and tranquil.
Because of this I always read the Lotus Blossom Sutra.
With wholehearted vigor under trees, what is there to love or hate?
How enviable; sound of evening rains in deep autumn.
And spring rains here in this Black Forest valley are pretty wonderful too.
It being a VERY Holy Day and this being Germany we can hardly draw a breath. Certainly not lift a finger. So what else to do but sit still and then sit still some more. And it is raining after all.
Having a day/time scheduled into ones days/year for ‘religious observance’ is not half a bad thing. That’s considering how the bustle of life tends to fill every nook and cranny to the point when one can actually believe there is no time left to do anything other than….fill every nook and cranny with activity. You could describe formal meditation as ‘deliberately deciding not to do anything’.
Arriving at a full and complete STOP is easier said than done. May body and mind find suitable relaxation – every day.