Happy Lunar New Year 新年快樂！

Happy new year!

新年快樂！

May this year of the Ox bring health, happiness and joy to all of you!

 祝您身體健康，幸福快樂。

Tianmu Sanyu Temple

三玉宮

Taipei, Taiwan

台北，台灣

photo: (c) Bruce Behnke, April, 2016

something better

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

~Mary Oliver

verse from Sleeping In The Forest

© 1978 by Mary Oliver

photo: Mt. Horaiji, Aichi Prefecture, Japan 

© 2019 bruce behnke

waiting

 

一棵開花的樹

如何讓你遇見我

在我最美麗的時刻　為這

我已在佛前　求了五百年

求他讓我們結一段塵緣

　

佛於是把我化作一棵樹

長在你必經的路旁

陽光下慎重地開滿了花

朵朵都是我前世的盼望

　

當你走近　請你細聽

那顫抖的葉是我等待的熱情

而當你終於無視地走過

在你身後落了一地的

朋友啊　那不是花瓣

是我凋零的心

~  席慕蓉

A Flowering Tree　

How to make you meet me

at my most beautiful moment?

I have prayed for this before the Buddha

for five hundred years--

Where I beg him to let us form a bond in earthly life.

　

Buddha turned me into a tree.

I grow by the road you pass by every day,

Cautiously blooming in the sun.

Each Blossom is a hope from my previous life.

　

When you come near, please listen carefully.

That trembling of leaves is the enthusiasm

from my waiting,

And when you finally pass by,

What has landed around you, my friend,

Are not flower petals.

It is my starving heart.

~ Xi Murong

(Translation by Bruce Behnke)

photo: Narita San 'Buddhist Temple Garden

(c) 2015 Bruce Behnke

remembering

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. 

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. 

~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

photo: moonset over Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii

(c) bruce Behnke 2017

making the unknown known

Georgia O'Keeffe said that if something means so much to an artist that they try to capture it in an image, it is a step toward making the unknown known.

For her, painting clarified something she felt but did not clearly understand and gave her thoughts and emotions direct expression.  To that end, she often painted the scenery viewed from her backyard in Abiquiu, New Mexico.

Her efforts are encouraging for all of us, travel restricted, to unlock the mysteries of our own backyards and, metaphorically, the secrets buried within our own minds.

photo: my backyard in Hawaii, U.S.A

(c) bruce Behnke 2021

then decide

Walk around feeling like a leaf.

Know you could tumble any second.

Then decide what to do with your time.

  ~  Naomi Shihab Nye

photos: Gyeongju,South Korea 

(c) bruce behnke 2019

dreams

 

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

~Thomas Jefferson 

A kadomatsu (門松, "gate pine") is a traditional Japanese decoration of the New Year placed in pairs in front of homes to welcome ancestral spirits or kami of the harvest.

photo: bruce behnke 2019, Aichi Prefecture, Japan