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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Poems by Santoka Taneda

today again,
soaking wet
I walk on an unknown road

 

there is nothing else I can do;
I walk on and on

 

my heart is weary —
the mountains, the sea
are too beautiful


the breeze from the mountains
in the wind bell
makes me want to live

 

alone
listening
to a woodpecker

 

picking
the nameless flower
I offer it to buddha

 

all day long I said nothing
the sound of the waves

 

alone, I watch the moon
sink behind the mountain

 

just as it is --
it rains, I get wet, I walk

 

No path but this one --
I walk alone

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

 

Kisagotami

A child dead.
And a mad search for a magic seed.

It’s a story as old as dust.

Brave up, my sisters.

The day will come
when you run
from house
to house.

People will meet you at the door,
look you in the eye,
and they won’t let you in.

I’m sorry, they’ll say.
But we can’t help you.

Listen.

When everyone you love is gone,
when everything you have
has been taken away,
you’ll find the Path
waiting
underneath
every rock
on the
road.

These are the words of Kisagotami.

from Matty Weingast’s book: The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns

Marie Bortolotto



The clear water sparkles like crystal,
You can see through it easily, right to the bottom.
My mind is free from every thought,
Nothing in the myriad realms can move it.
Since it cannot be wantonly roused,
Forever and forever it will stay unchanged.
When you have learned to know in this way,
You will know there is no inside or out!'

-Han-Shan




 

Seclusion is happiness for one who is content;
who has heard the Dhamma and clearly sees.

Freedom from ill-will is happiness in the world,
for one harmless towards living beings.


Dispassion is happiness in regard to the world,
for one transcending all sense desires.


But the dispelling of the conceit ‘I am’
~ this is truly the highest happiness.

Buddha: Udana 2.1 

 

Marie Bortolotto Art

 

Saturday, March 16, 2024

All is Full of Love - Bjork


Spring is arriving in Western Canada. All is full of Love!

 

walking meditation; a helicopter circles overhead
cutting through

- Marie Bortolotto


Thursday, March 14, 2024

Sumana ~ Flowering Jasmine

Walk through
the mind
all day
and
all night.

When you find
each thought
ending
right
where
it began—

here your circling ends.

 

Tissa ~ The Third


Why stay here
in your little
dungeon?
If you really want
to be free,
make
every
thought
a thought of freedom.
Break your chains.
Tear down the walls.
Then walk the world a free woman.

 

-from Matty Weingast’s book: The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns


Marie Bortolotto 2024

 

Marie Bortolotto 2024

 

Sunday, February 11, 2024

 "When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object."

- Milan Kundera, Czech/French novelist

Saturday, February 3, 2024

 Inspired by Cave Art Paintings of Lascaux


Marie Bortolotto Artist 2024


 Inspired by Cave Art Paintings of Lascaux


Marie Bortolotto Artist
















Wednesday, January 3, 2024

 

"What surrounds us here and now is not guaranteed. It could just as well not exist -- and so man constructs poetry out of the remnants found in ruins."

Czeslaw Milosz, The Witness of Poetry



Thursday, November 30, 2023

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

 
 
Words by Henry Miller, Sexus

“The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission is to preach and to teach. These are gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don’t ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners. What you do with your petty life is of no concern to them. What you do with your life is only of concern to you, they seem to say. In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire. And what more can one ask of a human being than that?”

Saturday, November 11, 2023

Reasoning comes to an end
a thought breaks in the middle
all day nothing but time
undisturbed all year
clouds come and go on a deserted mountain
in a clear sky the moon is a lonesome O
even if yoga or alchemy worked
it couldn’t match knowing Zen

- Shiwu Qingqong (Stonehouse) 1272 - 1352
from Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine 2023
Copper Canyon Press
/by Red Pine/Bill Porter

Friday, September 1, 2023

Marie Bortolotto 2023


The First Words
 
The first words got polluted
Like river water in the morning
Flowing with the dirt
Of blurbs and the front pages.
My only drink is meaning from the deep brain,
What the birds and the grass and the stones drink.
Let everything flow
Up to the four elements,
Up to water and earth and fire and air.

Seamus Heaney, Poet