Here's where things grow.

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire.  The reality of your own nature should determine the speed.  If you become restless, speed up.  If you become winded, slow down.  You climb the mountain in a equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.  Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but unique event in itself.  This leaf has jagged edges.  This rock looks loose.  From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer.  These are things you should notice anyway.  To live only for some future goal is shallow.  It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.  Here's where things grow.

                                                       ~Robert Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

What is real?

"I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on.  We saw it and yet we didn't see it.  Or rather we were trained not to see it.  Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland.  It was a puzzling thing.  This truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth." and so it goes away."

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"We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk.  The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone."

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~Robert Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Sky

What do you see?

Ips Engraver Beetles have caused serious damage to pine forests of the Western United States.  Under the bark of fallen trees you can find artful evidence of their work.  What do you see in their destructive dances?

Red Rock

Red Rock National Conservation Area       

Dry Creek

                                                                                                                               near Mt. Charleston, NV

                                   

Go!

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.  ~Lao Zi

Palm Triptych

A matter of perspective

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; 

you can live as if everything is a miracle.  ~Albert Einstein

Dream Time

At the sound of wind,

rustling bamboo leaves

near the window.

Short is my nap

and its dream.

~ 式子内親王 Shikishi Naishinnō

The Best Days of Your Life

春有百花秋有月 The spring flowers, the autumn moon;

夏有涼風冬有雪 Summer breezes, winter snow.

若無閑事挂心頭 If useless things do not clutter your mind,

更是人間好時節 You have the best days of your life.

~無門慧開     ~Wu Men Huai Kai

Hope

The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow.     In that lies hope.                                                       

 ~Frank Lloyd Wright

Everything is related...

Beyond the beauty of external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence.  Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence shines through somehow.  It only reveals itself to you when you are present.  Could it be that this nameless essence and your presence are one and the same?

                                                                                   ~Eckhart Tolle

                                                                                     The Power of Now

A Drop of Water

A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.

~Sivananda Saraswati

Clouds over O'ahu, Hawai'i

Beginnings and Endings and Beginnings...

It is better to spend one day contemplating the birth and death of all things

than a hundred years never contemplating beginnings and endings.

~Buddha