Padma

Lotus pond, China
Author: Hedda Morrison (German, 1908-1991)
Date: ca. 1933-46

Hedda Morrison studied photography in her native Germany, and from 1933 to 1938 managed Hartung’s Photo Shop in Beijing. From 1938 until she and her husband left China in 1946, Morrison worked as a freelance photographer, selling individual prints or thematic albums of her work and creating photographs for other people’s books on China.

Above is a photo of a man sitting idly with two children in the winter sun. It reveals more information than it seems:

“The empty wicker basket suggests that this old man and children are probably from a village outside Peking and have come into the city to trade. On the wall behind the children is a graffiti scrawl written in chalk which represents a play upon the opening words of the Thousand Character Classic (Qianziwen), which refers to the creation of the universe.”

The children in the baskets resemble the growth of the lotus flower,  it’s roots in the earth rising through the water and nourished by the air…beautiful  PADMA! – j. quigley

PADMAPANI

Flowers in the sky.

Flowers on Earth.

Lotuses bloom as Buddha’s eyelids.

Lotuses bloom in man’s heart.

Holding gracefully a lotus in his hand,

the bodhisattva brings forth a universe of art.

In the meadows of the sky, stars have sprung up.

The smiling, fresh moon is already up.

The jade-colored trunk of a coconut tree

reaches across the late-night sky.

My mind, traveling in utmost emptiness,

catches suchness on its way home.

1976

by Thich Nhat Hanh (1929 –

…from Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh by Thich Nhat Hanh

Time to Create

Mary Oliver

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

– Mary Oliver

To write to your heart’s content….paint till you drop…play music obsessively…whichever you even have the tiniest spark to do,  just start.  We can surprise ourselves and find out things about ourselves we never realized we could do, just because we started!  – JQ

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. […]
The world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

From “Wild Geese”;

Dream Work (1986)

Japanese Cranes

at the gate
so many in the mist!
Sumida River cranes

Issa

via shogunpassion:

Japanese cranes by Dennis Binda

This Autumn Evening

by  Ohara Koson

           No one travels

           Along this way but I,

           This Autumn evening.

                                             -Basho

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the grand old man of Beat publication and founder of The City Lights bookshop and publishing house – and fine poet in his own right, turns 92 today!

************

Lawrence Ferlinghetti – from Coney Island of the Mind

Don’t let that horse
eat that violin

cried Chagall’s mother

But he
kept right on
painting

And became famous

And kept on painting
The Horse with Violin In Mouth

And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
and rode away

waving the violin

And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across

And there were no strings
attached

(Photo: Scott Sommerdorf, 1987)

• Reblogged from Gacougnol

THE PRAYERBOOK OF APHRODITE

photosight.ru →

Kinskaj Aleksandra Photography – Photosight.ru

Five Cantos From The Prayer Book of Aphrodite
by Sandra Kasturi

Love is a black beetle,
chitinous, serrated,
many segmented and complex.

Love is the soft ear
of a wild cherry flower,
a Japanese pen and ink.

Love is a strange sea bird
fractious in its cries
as it flies in land.

Love is a chambered nautilus shell
thrown into startled hands
by a devilish sea.

Love is a fickle moon’s round reflection
caught in a sieve
by the fishers of memory.

via ghoulnextdoor.tumblr.com