A Zen meditation

Probably my most favourite words below for it conjures up an image of water flowing for evermore......

Clearing the mind and sliding in
to that created space,
a web of waters streaming over rocks,
air misty but not raining,
seeing this land from a boat on a lake
or a broad slow river,
coasting by.

Yesterday I listened to two writers who I like.  Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, both American as you can tell by the names.  They chatted easily about their books and poems, and of course their lives.

Snyder had lived in Japan for sometime and had married a Japanese wife but then he returned to America and built a homestead.  Can you imagine doing that in Britain for goodness sake, with the great letter of the law finding a thousand reasons not to build.  I fancy a 'tiny home' and often look at videos where people live quite happily with less but create a home both practical and beautiful.  Much easier to do in the outbacks of Australia, New Zealand and America though.

Six Persimmons

Snyder mentioned 'The Six Persimmons' a very famous thirteenth century painting by a Chinese monk called Mu Qui, it is in Kyoto.  It is drawn with blue-back ink, the brush stroke must be accurate as it touches the paper.  Reminded me of the recent event of the pen that covered King Charles fingers with ink and put him  in a bad mood, well Mu Qui used his brush with a greater skill.

As a drawing its symbolic message and understanding of it can be found in this short wiki on it and also in the video which I shall put on below.  For it is simplistic, until you start to study it.

Paul had introduced the painting to me, as he did the following mantra, which I found on one of my blogs.  The old Buddhist prayer book is featured in this blog.  The Four Vows.

Prayer or mantra, it is simple.

I have never studied Buddhism, I think of it as a state of  'not being' which some would say is a state of death but than others would say that our dust melds with the dust of everything else and becomes part of the Universe.