pictures, poems and pearls of wisdom . . .

Stop trying to leave and you will arrive
Stop seeking and you will see
Stop running away and you will be found 

- Lao-Tzu

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As the lotus rises on its stalk unsoiled by the mud and the water,
so the wise one speaks in peace and is unstained by the opinions of the world
- Sutta Nipata

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One Perfect Rose
by Dorothy Parker

A single flower he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet –
One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
“My fragile leaves,” it said, “his heart enclose.”
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one’s ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah, no – it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

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 [Image by Public-domain-images.blogspot.com]

These paper lanterns play a major part in the five-day Festival of Lights (Diwali) in Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism. It is celebrated in India, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Mauritius, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Fiji, Surinam, and elsewhere.

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Preconceptions
by Milarepa

Just as fog is dispelled by the strength of the sun
and is dispelled no other way,
preconception is cleared by the strength of realization.
There's no other way of clearing preconceptions.
Experience them as baseless dreams.
Experience them as ephemeral bubbles.
Experience them as insubstantial rainbows.
Experience them as indivisible space.

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pictures, poems and pearls of wisdom

Men today have abandoned compassion in order to be bold, discarded economy to be big spenders and rejected humility in order to be first. - Lao-Tzu

Click on the images to enlarge

A 10th Century painting by Huang Quan

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Two Hunters
(Anon)

 There were but two beneath the sky -
The thing I came to kill, and I.
I, under covert, quietly
Watched him sense eternity
From quivering brush to pointed nose
My gun to shoulder level rose.
And then I felt (I could not see)
Far off a hunter watching me.
I slowly put my rifle by,
For there were two who had to die -
The thing I wished to kill, and I. 

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Black-backed Kingfisher, Southern Thailand

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Speaking Truth
By Jesa MacBeth

It is possible to speak truth in anger.
When so done, people tend to hear the anger and not the truth.

It is possible to speak truth in arrogance.
When so done, people tend to hear the arrogance and not the truth.

It is possible to speak truth in deceitful ways.
When so done, people tend to sense the deceit and take the truth for more deceit.

It is possible to speak truth in loving kindness.
When so done, people tend to hear the love and the truth.

Or so it seems in my experience.

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Where there is peace and meditation, then there is neither anxiety or doubt. St Francis of Assisi

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taking the one less travelled by
Wednesdays and Saturdays

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pictures, poems and pearls of wisdom . . .

He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much. - Lao-Tzu  

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From “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad” by George Orwell 1946

“Before the swallow, before the daffodil, and not much later than the snowdrop, the common toad salutes the coming of spring after his own fashion, which is to emerge from a hole in the ground, where he has lain buried from the previous autumn, and crawl as rapidly as possible towards the nearest suitable patch of water. Something . . has told him it is time to wake up . . .

“At this period, after his long fast, the toad has a very spiritual look, like a strict Anglo-Catholic towards the end of Lent. His movements are languid but purposeful, his body is shrunken, and by contrast his eyes look abnormally large. This allows one to notice, what one might not at any other time, that a toad has about the most beautiful eye of any living creature. It is like gold, or more exactly like the golden-coloured semi-precious stone which one sometimes sees in signet rings, and which I think is called a chrysoberyl.”

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A Lavender Farm, Hokkaido

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From “Ode” by Arthur O’Shaughnessy

We are the music makers,
  And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
  And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,    
  On whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers
  Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,    
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory;
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
  Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure    
  Can trample a kingdom down.

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“The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich 

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All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. 

Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door. 

- Albert Camus

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pictures, poems and pearls of wisdom . . .

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough. - Lao-Tzu

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I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people’s eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth. - Sylvia Plath

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Everyone Sang

by Siegfried Sassoon

Everyone suddenly burst out singing:
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields: on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun;
My heart was shaken with tears: and horror
Drifted away . . . O, but everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

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Untitled by Lilla Cabot Perry

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The hardest thing about the road not taken is that you never know where it might have led. 

 Lisa Wingate (A Month of Summer)

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Page Two of The Victorian Scrapblog was added on Friday

http://thevictorianscrapblog.blogspot.com

pictures and poems and pearls of wisdom . . .



To know, yet to think that one does not know is best. Not to know, yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. - Lao-Tzu
 

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One day an Englishman, a Frenchman, an Indonesian and a Chinaman were passing a drinking fountain, when the Englishman said, “Look, someone’s left a cup on the wall here.”

“No, no”, said the Frenchman, “that’s not a cup, that’s a tasse.”

“You’re both wrong,” said the Indonesian, “It’s a cawan.”

“Now, hold on,” said the Chinaman, “you’re all wrong, that’s a pei, and I can prove it. The Chinese dictionary is much older than any of yours, and anyway more people speak Chinese than any other language. So it’s called a pei.”

While they were arguing, a Buddhist came past and drank from the cup.

“Whether you call it a cup, a tasse, a cawan or a pei,” he said, “the purpose of this vessel is for it to be used. So why don’t you stop arguing, and drink?”

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The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
(J. R. R. Tolkien)

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Water Lilies (Clouds)

Claude Monet

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taking the one less travelled by

is updated every Wednesday and Saturday

pictures and poems and pearls of wisdom . . .

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength. 

Loving someone deeply gives you courage - Lao-Tzu

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Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield - Robert Louis Stevenson

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In Extremis
 John Updike

I saw my toes the other day.
I hadn't looked at them for months.
Indeed, they might have passed away.
And yet they were my best friends once.
When I was small, I knew them well.
I counted on them up to ten
And put them in my mouth to tell
The larger from the lesser. Then
I loved them better than my ears,
My elbows, adenoids, and heart.
But with the swelling of the years
We drifted, toes and I, apart.
Now, gnarled and pale, each said, j'accuse!
I hid them quickly in my shoes.

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Click the image to enlarge

"The Ferry Across the Angara in Irkutsk"
Nikolai Florianovich Dobrovolsky
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NEXT POST WEDNESDAY

a picture to admire

 [Thanks to photos-public-domain.com]

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just a thought

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock. (Henry Ward Beecher)

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 a poem to ponder

To Blossoms

by

Robert Herrick

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast?

Your date is not so past,

But you may stay here yet awhile

To blush and gently smile,

And go at last.

What, were you born to be

An hour or half's delight,

And so to bid good-night?

'Twas pity Nature brought ye forth

Merely to show your worth,

And lose you quite.

But you are lovely leaves, where we

May read how soon things have

Their end, though ne'er so brave:

And after they have shown their pride

Like you awhile, they glide

Into the grave.

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music to meditate by

“Greensleeves” sung by Méav Ní Mhaolchatha of Celtic Woman 

uploaded by Avostal

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and a saying by Lao-Tzu

Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.

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NEW - The Victorian Scrapblog - NEW
beginning Friday 12th October
http://thevictorianscrapblog.blogspot.com

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a picture to admire

The Japanese Garden at the Devonian Botanic Gardens, Edmonton, Canada

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a poem to ponder 

Autumn by William Blake

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stainèd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayest rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

“The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clustering Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feathered clouds strew flowers round her head.

“The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.”
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

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music to meditate by

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and a saying by Lao-Tzu

He who knows other men is learned.
He who knows himself is enlightened.

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THE VICTORIAN SCRAPBLOG

begins on Friday 12th October

http://thevictorianscrapblog.blogspot.com

two pictures to admire

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a poem to ponder

A Breath of Fresh Air
Lilly Bug

My eyes are opened
I can see this strange new place
A world of thoughts, dreams, and scenes
Scenes of my existence
Beauty shocks me
My electrified heart has reopened
I don’t know if what I feel is real
Tragic grips of longing, mourning, and yearning
Are silenced and at ease
Jolts of colours, sounds, and beauty
Jolts that have healed my soul
I feel no pain, no pain, no pain
My yin has found her yang
My soul has been refilled.

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music to meditate by

“Yesterday” by Paul McCartney
played by Richard Clayderman

2mins.23secs

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and a saying by Lao-Tzu

Kindness in words creates confidence, 

kindness in thinking creates profoundness, 

kindness in giving creates love.

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taking the one less travelled by
is updated every Wednesday and Saturday