Zen thinking

 This was not a good week for us as I got sick with some kind of stomach upset, which has improved, but not enough for me to write about my original idea for Saturday's blog. 

I decided instead to pull up some blogs from nearly 20 years ago and things I believed then, which I still do. Makes it handy to repeat it here for something fresh. Not sure how many of you read my blogs back then; but if so, even I'd forgotten these two. 

The key though is I still see things this way-- even as I no longer am that woman. Well I am mentally and emotionally but physically, not so much; but then, should I be? Life is about change, some decades more than others.This clearly looked like a good time for thinking about life. 

I still like all the quotes from earlier-- well except the one by Marsha Norman. If she was right, my soul is more confused than when I am awake lol. I like to dream though, one of the fun things for me about night-- although one of those recently was full of weird events. No nightmares but just what the heck was that about?

Friday, August 05, 2005

Zen Photographs

Photographs often are just recordings of events, places, but once in awhile one is what I call a Zen photograph-- they capture an idea, a feeling that is bigger than the individual elements within the photo. They are not greater art per se but carry a message which came not through careful planning but just a going with the flow or a lucky accident. They come out of a moment where the Universe flows through the camera to tell a story bigger than its parts.

This is such a photo. The woman has waded into the ocean, not way out, not swimming but she's in the sea of life. Her arms are opening to whatever she might want to hold. She is not afraid of the tides nor the huge sea behind her. She looks ahead toward life and what she can take into herself.

A Zen photo is a gift. This one shows what I wish my life to be.

August 2, 2005,

Favorite Quotes

Let my love like sunlight surround you and yet give you illumined freedom. Tagore

If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn't, it never was.

Dreams are necessary to life. Anais Nin

I do not unmarry...... But I marry myself. I take my fate as within. Sena Jeter Naslund

Where we choose to be-- we have that power to determine our lives. We cannot reel time backward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being. Sena Jeter Naslund

Dreams are ... illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you. Marsha Norman

The thing you have to be prepared for is that other people don't always dream your dream.  Linda Ronstadt

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.   Marcel Proust

The Talmud says, If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?