There is something distinctly clean and clear about this kind of poetry – Haiku. These are reflections of our time together as a sangha last week. Thank you so much to all who came along and walked. We walked and we walked and made it back to our starting point. Three dogs included.

Thursday:
august moorland
conversations interrupted
by mud

Friday:
forty toes
dipped in the brook
all kinds of sounds

in gassho,
Fred

I’m quite busy at the moment and for the next few days as well. As is my custom at such times I will endeavor to post some short poems (not original ones like the haiku from Fred) along with a photograph from my library. That should satisfy my wish and intention to keep posting. Field of Merit, the project and website, are calling for my attention as well as other things. All good stuff.

The Three Treasures bell.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Anonymous

Searching here and there
we may trip
and
falling over a stone
find it beautiful!

Mugo – May 2012

Here ends this series of poems and sayings. Quite soon I will climb aboard transport and eventually find myself in the North West of England again. Until then thank you to those who have read here, have left comments and who continue to read here. All very much appreciated.
May you bump into beauty, or what ever you want to call that which causes the heart to burst into song. My time here in the Black Forest and in The Netherlands has been song-full!

Walking meditation path.
Here is the second part of the poem by Master Ryokan. He was pondering the ‘first cause’ and reports that the workings of my mind go dead. Now he asks others what their response is….

I took these words to the old woman in the house to the east;
the old woman in the house to the east was not pleased.
I questioned the old man in the house to the west;
the old man in the house to the west puckered his brow and walked away.
I tried writing the question on a biscuit, fed it to the dogs,
but even the dogs refused to bite….

Master Ryokan

The five colours blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavours dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the wise person is guided by what she knows
and not by what she sees.
She lets go of ‘that’ and chooses ‘this’.

Laozi, Daodejing

This is a variation on the teaching of Bodhidharma on the five senses. Our senses being hungry and craving to be satisfied. Making it that much more difficult to choose wisely. Mind is regarded as a ‘sense’ in Buddhism and as with the other five is not regarded as seperate on a fundamental level.

An owl sat once with his sharp hearing, his watchfulness,
his bill, half-grown, majestic on my finger;
then I felt his huge and yellow stare
plant something foreign in me, a deep quiet,
a mad freedom; my heart laughed
when the bird raised his soft wings.

Thorkild Bjornvig, B. 1918, From “The Owl”

Today I saw a red kite flying close to the house here in the Black Forest. A rare sight. This quote from a longer poem strikes a cord. Once I met an owl, twice actually, and each time I was struck deeply by the depth of their presence.