A little Watts

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Alan Watts

Tao Te Ching

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold onto.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut your hand.

Tao Te Ching
translation by Stephen Mitchell

Amazing Property for Sale in the Ozarks!

This is the wonderful home of a very good friend of mine. I spent a week there and fell in love with the place and should have liked to live there. But, instead made the decision to attend University which has definitely fulfilled some desires. Looking back, time in the words practicing yoga and chi gong with the company of my friend would have perhaps provided for a higher education than University!

The main house is beautiful and is fully off the grid capable with solar panels and a wood burning furnace if needed. There are fruit and nut trees, wild berries, and lots of wild game for omnivores (myself included). In addition there is 1350 square feet of well constructed raised beds.

There is a guest house, a barn (that could be converted into a house), a tool shed, and a root cellar!

The most striking aspect of the property are the waterfalls. One of them spills over into a rather mystical box canyon. The other water fall is really a series of small water falls that gently cascade over sedimentary rock.

Last, but not least, is the space. 137 acres of forest bordered by state forests and some very nice neighbors who make some really good kombucha.

Anyhow, I will post some more pictures at the bottom. If you want some more information, check out this web listing http://www.greenhomesforsale.com/listing.php?id=17971.

The Perpetual Dancer

The Perpetual Dancer

by my friend Amy

Silence, the depth of Being.

The core of my soul, the core of life.

Pulsing without moving,

Expanding without changing.

The all and nothing of everything,

Lying just beneath the surface.

My life, my well, my Joy.

Eternal, Unchanging, the Abounding Void.

Ever present, my constant companion,

The Perpetual Dancer.

A Poem by Me

Bound to the mill by our own device
We mistake the actor for the part
In doing so lose the core of our heart
Forgetting the space beyond the stage
We are caught inside an invisible cage
A prison of time and space, decay and age
No warden but I, Me, Mine
For beyond this we are truly sparks Divine

-ishtar ishaya-

Lee's Book

This is a little bit off topic for the blog, but I wanted to show you anyhow. . . . it is a wonderful photography book just finished by my sister's boyfriend Lee Gumienny.

I am usually not so into photography books, but this one I found to be very engrossing. It is a tale in the language of photography of his time in South Korea as an expatriate English teacher. He published it through Blurb.com and if you are interested there are some viewable sample pictures. Here is the link that will take you there. . .http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/432915. . . . .

Xanadu

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry,
Beware! Beware!His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Xanadu by Samuel Taylor Coleridge