Poem: Doves

doves flush from the maples
art deco airframes torpedoing through the branches
rolling left and right


(Photo courtesy of Imran Shah and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Evening sky

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Curriculum Vitae

No board, no checkers
Calligraphy worth nothing
Round-eyed hermit monk

WW: Ancient oil can

(Found this all-steel imperial quart motor oil can on a recent walk along a former logging road – now in a protected natural area. Judging exact age is hard with no labelling left, but Internet-roshi says cans of this type were standard from the 20s through the 50s. All things considered, I'd guess 40s – early 50s for this one. Note the distinctive hole left by the old-school oil can spout. I threw at least one of those spouts away a few years ago, when I moved my mom out of the house she'd lived in for nearly 40 years.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

The Mountain Kyôsaku

"Although we say mountains belong to the country, actually, they belong to those that love them."

Dōgen

WW: Relics of childhood

(I recently captured this scene in a part of the county that was urbanised well after my own stretch of woods. It made me nostalgic. Notice the signpost pointing off the highway down a long, squirrelly dirt road, along which multiple houses are identified by number. And behind it, the old shelter where the children from those houses waited for the school bus, out of the rain.

Today young families can no longer afford to live there, and what few may stray in consider making kids walk up the road and interact with other kids abusive. Thus the state of this shelter, which seems last to have been used not long after I left for university.

By which time the signposts and shelters had long disappeared from my part of the county.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

The Show

Practice isn't just sitting; nor is it just form.

Practice is what happens in your head while you're out living.

This truth may be a little more accessible to hermits, who seldom congregate for zazen, and whose indulgence in other forms is necessarily spare and simplified. But the stuff you do at Zen centre, while valuable and worthwhile, is only a rehearsal for practice.

The actual practice begins when you leave the zendo.

Or the cushion, for free-range monks like me.


(Photo courtesy of Petr Sidorov and Unsplash.com.)