I ain't a twitterer, yet...
I prefer to blog on Bambuddhism -- where I can express swirling, hestitant, inchoate fragments of ideas to myself w/o forming those staccato chirpings of the ultra-modern technological era.
I'm guess an old-style, old-world, old-technology guy at heart...
Words, sentences, poetry, expression, observation, symbols, nature, earth, wind, bamboo... those are what I rely on for my muse and inspiration, not modern morse code.
I guess if you want to understand my sense of my own life look up my recent post on 'Bamboo Buddhism' a week or two ago.
Of course, I still have that youthful, naive, eager, innocent urge to improve. cleanse and purify the world, but with a few more decades under my belt, I'm a bit more of a recluse from the outside world, as well...
Tending my own garden, as Hugo described, in "Les Miserables".
[It's 4 pm on a Saturday, a sunny afternoon after a morning drizzle. I'm just about to take a late afternoon bucket bath after being out in the garden since about 8 am this morning. Some cleaning the streambed where a slew of bamboo leaves and stuff had collected along the stone passages. Then, out in the far back -- what Sue Roe called 'the Farm' the other day -- trimming the extra lower branches on the new bamboo culms. Afterwards, digging a 1.5' deep canal below the lower rock garden to keep the water moving off our land so as not to collect at the narrow passages between the boulders. Then, a mid-day dal bhaat w/ Leah and her dear Danish friend, Esther, before going back outside trimming branches on the Himalayan maple and the Deodar (Himalayan cedar) by the guestroom that were occupying too much of the frontyard. Most recently, back to finish the canal, using a hoe, a shovel while mostly digging the soil out the mud w/ my hands, tearing my nails and putting on callouses on my keyboard office hands. I like looking at the scraps and scratches on my hands during the week as a reminder of my 'other' life out back up here in Budhanilkantha...]
One needs that privacy and physical labor, too, as we get older and more wounded or disappointed by the world.
A place of one's own.
Somewhere where we can be slightly purer, untarnished, and, for a few moments, free of the world's eternal travails and compromises.
Scott has Kampot. Robin had Correivic, Scotland. Matthew and Caroline their own separate La Grasses idylls. Bruce the Cape. Dave his Oregon coast. Jeff Maine. Rick his cabin in the Adirondacks. Diane and Marc their cottage in woods of Ontario... while I have Budhanilkantha.
Each of us has created our spiritual oasises in nature. While, for some reason, Nepal become mine. I believe we each have to find our own while we are in this crazy, demanding and marginal world.
Make a honorable life, create a family, offer love to a few precious individuals, raise a chld, love deeply, lose friends peacefully, embrace the sorrows that fill our days, drink deeply from literature, offer kindness to other's personal lives, honor our parents, offer something fresh for the world, keep a bit of it for oneself and constantly re-create oneself to find humor and sensitivity in the tragi-comedic passing of this human condition...
I guess that's a bit of my zeitgiest and worldview...
There is time enough, time enough, to form one's soul while helping to liberate others (and vice versa...) from our daily sufferings.
Life's a gift.
A mixed-up blessing, for sure, but while we are here it's enough to ensure a joyful celebration of an amazing natural world... w/ man as a bit of an after-thought.
But one we are definitely thankful for...
Such are my shabat blessings today...
I prefer to blog on Bambuddhism -- where I can express swirling, hestitant, inchoate fragments of ideas to myself w/o forming those staccato chirpings of the ultra-modern technological era.
I'm guess an old-style, old-world, old-technology guy at heart...
Words, sentences, poetry, expression, observation, symbols, nature, earth, wind, bamboo... those are what I rely on for my muse and inspiration, not modern morse code.
I guess if you want to understand my sense of my own life look up my recent post on 'Bamboo Buddhism' a week or two ago.
Of course, I still have that youthful, naive, eager, innocent urge to improve. cleanse and purify the world, but with a few more decades under my belt, I'm a bit more of a recluse from the outside world, as well...
Tending my own garden, as Hugo described, in "Les Miserables".
[It's 4 pm on a Saturday, a sunny afternoon after a morning drizzle. I'm just about to take a late afternoon bucket bath after being out in the garden since about 8 am this morning. Some cleaning the streambed where a slew of bamboo leaves and stuff had collected along the stone passages. Then, out in the far back -- what Sue Roe called 'the Farm' the other day -- trimming the extra lower branches on the new bamboo culms. Afterwards, digging a 1.5' deep canal below the lower rock garden to keep the water moving off our land so as not to collect at the narrow passages between the boulders. Then, a mid-day dal bhaat w/ Leah and her dear Danish friend, Esther, before going back outside trimming branches on the Himalayan maple and the Deodar (Himalayan cedar) by the guestroom that were occupying too much of the frontyard. Most recently, back to finish the canal, using a hoe, a shovel while mostly digging the soil out the mud w/ my hands, tearing my nails and putting on callouses on my keyboard office hands. I like looking at the scraps and scratches on my hands during the week as a reminder of my 'other' life out back up here in Budhanilkantha...]
One needs that privacy and physical labor, too, as we get older and more wounded or disappointed by the world.
A place of one's own.
Somewhere where we can be slightly purer, untarnished, and, for a few moments, free of the world's eternal travails and compromises.
Scott has Kampot. Robin had Correivic, Scotland. Matthew and Caroline their own separate La Grasses idylls. Bruce the Cape. Dave his Oregon coast. Jeff Maine. Rick his cabin in the Adirondacks. Diane and Marc their cottage in woods of Ontario... while I have Budhanilkantha.
Each of us has created our spiritual oasises in nature. While, for some reason, Nepal become mine. I believe we each have to find our own while we are in this crazy, demanding and marginal world.
Make a honorable life, create a family, offer love to a few precious individuals, raise a chld, love deeply, lose friends peacefully, embrace the sorrows that fill our days, drink deeply from literature, offer kindness to other's personal lives, honor our parents, offer something fresh for the world, keep a bit of it for oneself and constantly re-create oneself to find humor and sensitivity in the tragi-comedic passing of this human condition...
I guess that's a bit of my zeitgiest and worldview...
There is time enough, time enough, to form one's soul while helping to liberate others (and vice versa...) from our daily sufferings.
Life's a gift.
A mixed-up blessing, for sure, but while we are here it's enough to ensure a joyful celebration of an amazing natural world... w/ man as a bit of an after-thought.
But one we are definitely thankful for...
Such are my shabat blessings today...
No comments:
Post a Comment