Letting Go

“We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss, and we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go.”
--Joan Didion

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
--Pema Chödrön, from “When Things Fall Apart”

ALL

The Three Things

Yes, but remember...

No Amount Of Anxiety

Your Moment of Zen (Rock Garden)

San Francisco-based Yuki Kawae creates his own Zen rock gardens and they are beautiful.

Visit his website for instruction on how to build your own box and how to style your rock garden!

https://www.yukikawae.com/

Zen and a Post-COVID World

In a conversation on NHK World Japan, internationally renowned garden designer, chief priest of the Sōtō Zen temple Kenkō-ji, professor at Tama Art University, and president of his own design firm Shunmyō Masuno told design strategist Eisuke Tachikawa that Buddhist principles will guide the post-COVID world.

Waterside Buddhist Shrine

Your moment of Zen: Beijing-based practice Archstudio designed the minimalist "Waterside Buddhist Shrine" in the northern Chinese province of Hebei as an immersive experience close to nature. The entire interior is located under a hillside next to a river and is formed from cast-in-place concrete using one inch pine strips to give the walls a beautiful, organic texture. The Buddhist altar is situated under a canted skylight and the curved back wall channels light down into the area. The tea-drinking area in front of the Buddhist altar faces the river and features a low table with floor cushions and carved modern back rests.

http://www.archstudio.cn/works/detail/1270998765691473920

BEAUTY: Photography--Ronny Behnert

Photographer Ronny Behnert travels the world photographing special places and I particularly like his series called Torri.

"I met Shintoism and Buddhism, the most widespread religions in Japan, all over the country. Shrines and torii, the traditional Japanese gates that symbolize the entrance to a Shinto shrine and form the transition from profane to sacred spaces, can be found in the most remote places in Japan. Even in the Pacific along the coast, high up on Mount Fuji and in the dense, uninhabited forests outside of the big cities, the torii are not uncommon.

In order to give each torii the necessary space for a dominant presence and at the same time to achieve a simple, minimalist image effect, I used strong neutral density filters for taking photos, which helped me achieve exposure times of five minutes and longer to make all the disturbing elements in the photo disappear . The longer the exposure time, the more clearly the existing wave structures of the troubled Pacific become blurred in order to take away even the smallest, disturbing picture element from the main subject.

The entire series is very important to me, as I have a very emotional connection to the Torii for an indefinable reason. So I am all the more pleased that the photos in this series were awarded 1st place at the Sony World Photography Awards in the landscape category."

https://www.bewegungsunschaerfe.de/de/torii

We Need A Phurba NOW!

Tribal ethnographic art site Primitive Inc. is showing a beautiful antique Buddhist object whose use is desperately needed now!

"In the summer of 1900 a Daoist monk traveled to the edge of the Gobi Desert on a retreat. Locals had told him about some unusual caves on the eastern slope of Echoing-Sand Mountain. They sounded like the perfect place to meditate. However, upon his arrival he discovered more than caves. In front of him lay a series of grottoes containing complete temples carved into the mountainside. Meditation gave way to exploration. He found fantastic frescoes covering walls and ceilings, deities carved into bedrock, and evidence of a once vibrant, now abandoned community. Inside one cave he found a vault containing thousands of documents dating all the way back to the fourth century. In time, exploration gave way to knowledge and he uncovered ancient instructions on how to magically wield this week’s New Arrival.

This week’s New Arrival features a Yak bone Phurba from Nepal. Also known as a Kila or ritual dagger, it is really a ritual implement used by shamans. Yet, who uses it is less important than why it is used. The documents discovered in 1900 revealed how the Phurba could connect heaven and earth; obliterate violence and aggression; and vanquish ignorance, intolerance and insensitivity. Capable of destroying negativity through transmutation, if used properly it can neutralize prejudice, anger, and hate; whether those thought forms are generated by an individual or a group. Although the Phurba is not a physical weapon, it is the only weapon demanding deployment now."

YES! PHURBA NOW!!!

http://www.beprimitive.com/past-new-arrivals/phurba

Whatever Happened To Liuquan?

The Drents Museum in The Netherlands recently sent one of their objects--a reliquary holding mummified remains--to the Meander Medical Center for a CT scan and endoscopy. They discovered the mummified remains of Liuquan, a Buddhist Master from the Chinese Meditation School, who died around 1100. And during the endoscopy, the medical staff who graciously donated their time to this project made another wonderful discovery: inside the body cavity where internal organs would have been were found scraps of paper with Chinese characters, presumably prayers to accompany Liuquan's spirit.

Photo by M. Elsevier Stokmans; Boeddhamummie (Drents Museum)

Photo by Jan van Esch, Meander Medical Center, NL

Photo by Jan van Esch, Meander Medical Center, NL

Photo by Jan van Esch, Meander Medical Center, NL

http://www.drentsmuseum.nl/

Do It Now

“Those who believe they have plenty of time get ready only at the time of death. Then they are ravaged by regret. But isn’t it far too late?”
--Padmasambhava

“Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.”
--Stephen Leacock

"What you want to acquire, you should dare to acquire by any means. What you want to see, even though it is with difficulty, you should see. You should not let it pass, thinking there will be another chance to see it or to acquire it. It is quite unusual to have a second chance to materialize your desire."
--Buson

BEAUTY: Sculpture--Wang Zi Won

What is human? What is machine? Will there be a day when the boundaries between the two are sufficiently blurred to allow the difference to disappear? If we make a machine that completely replicates human thought and consciousness, a machine that replicates what it is to be sentient, how will anyone be able to say that the machine is not feeling or thinking for itself? How can anyone judge if the machine is sentient? How do you prove you are sentient, aside from simply stating that you are?

Wang Zi Won's kinetic sculptures of cyborg bodhisattvas and buddhas blur this line. I am reminded of the profound Spielberg film "A.I." and of course Björk's transcendent video "All Is Full Of Love" (a rather Buddhist statement) featuring smooth white cyborgs in a state of agape.

http://ultraz1.com/