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ANYONE FOR HAIKU?

http://anyoneforhaiku.blogspot.com

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pictures, poems and pearls of wisdom . . .

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.
Care about other people's approval and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity. - Lao-Tzu

Roses

by George Eliot 

    You love the roses - so do I. I wish
    The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
    From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
    Then all the valley would be pink and white
    And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
    As feathers, smelling sweet: and it would be
    Like sleeping and yet waking, all at once.

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Young and Old

by Charles Kingsley

When all the world is young, lad,
  And all the trees are green,
And every goose a swan, lad,
  And every lass a queen,
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
  And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
  And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,
  And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
  And all the wheels run down,
Creep home, and take your place there,
  The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there
  You loved when all was young.

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TAKING THE ONE LESS TRAVELLED BY

Todays post brings this present series to an end. Perhaps a follow-up will be possible early in 2013.

 So to conclude, more pearls of wisdom, this is from Woody Allen in a more serious mood -

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have,

instead of what you don't have

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pictures, poems and pearls of wisdom . . .

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I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. - Gilda Radner

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Love Song

Spike Milligan

If I could write words

Like leaves on an Autumn Forest floor,

What a bonfire my letters would make.

If I could speak words of water,

You would drown when I said

"I love you."

- from Small Dreams of a Scorpion

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Better than a thousand
Hollow words
Is one word that brings peace.

Better than a thousand
Hollow verses
Is one verse that brings peace.

Better than a hundred
Hollow lines
Is one line of the law, bringing peace.

- from the Dhammapada
 
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NEXT POST WEDNESDAY 14TH NOVEMBER

pictures, poems and pearls of wisdom . . .



I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men. - Lao-Tzu

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Autobiography in Five Chapters

by Portia Nelson

1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost...
I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...it's a habit
My eyes are open; I know where I am;
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

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Leisure

by William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

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You will find meaning in life only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.

 (written by the Indian mystic Osho 1931-1990)

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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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