Tao and words
The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.
Thomas Merton
The Way of Chuang TzuThe banner photo
Looking north: Chesterman Beach, Tofino, BC. See Storm watching.-
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It is experience that is the ultimate teacher. That is why wise people travel constantly and test themselves against the flux of circumstance.
Deng Ming-Dao
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Tag Archives: Japanese garden
Pretending to have a Japanese garden
This photo and the following bulleted paragraph are from my About page, which deconstructs the title of this blog, in this case the middle word “garden”:
Posted in Art | Design, Tao | Zen, Tsuboniwa
Tagged balcony garden, Japanese garden, meditation, pocket garden, Tarrant, water, Zen
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Riders of the Last Spark
[This was originally posted on September 16, 2011, but had to be completely and imperfectly re-written following the crash of a MySQL server at my Web hosting service.]
The allusion in the title of this post is pretty simple. But if you don’t recognize it, the rest of us will wait while you check this page at IMDB…. I agree: It’s an awful pun, but please allow me to explain in the context of the following stunning photograph:
Posted in Travel, Tsuboniwa
Tagged Japanese garden, ocean, Pacific, photography, Tofino, water, wedding
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Does a buddha have Molly nature?
That’s our cat Molly. Although she has the up-raised visage of a Madonna or an about-to-be-martyred saint in some 14th century painting, there is nothing angelic or beatific or holy about her. Like all cats, her outlook and bearing accord with this familiar aphorism: Dogs have owners; cats have staff.
Even if she doesn’t seem “spiritual,” however, she is very “contemplative.” Witness the four images below, which show typical behavior. The middle/upper shows Molly beside my meditation cushions, looking out at the earliest incarnation of what eventually became our Japanese balcony garden. I don’t know what she was thinking. Perhaps it was a prayerful, “please let that squirrel show up again this morning.” Presumably it was not a koan-inspired mu, although I suppose it could have been a mew. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist, even if it surely wasn’t original.)
The aesthetics of iMandalArt
Last September, I wrote a post about productivity apps and the impending appearance of the iPad version of iMandalArt. In November, I added a brief update with a link to the MandalArt Website with videos — three of them now in English — that show the app in action. Here is the one that I have subsequently found most helpful:
Less than a week after my update, iMandalArt HD was released, and I have now been living with it for a bit more than two months. I say “living with,” rather than “using,” advisedly. As I wrote in the original post:
Posted in Art | Design, Tao | Zen, Technology
Tagged aesthetics, apps, art, iMandalArt, iPad, Japanese garden, MandalArt, technology, wabi-sabi
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