Weekly Photo Challenge: Ephemeral

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fresh

These pictures were taken between March 19 and March 24. The flower is growing in a gravel walking path.

March 19

March 21

March 22

March 23

March 24

March 24

This post was written for Weekly Photo Challenge: Fresh

Wordless Wednesday

Quote Regarding Meditation

640px-Kamakura_Budda_Daibutsu_front_1885 — Photo Credit: Wikimedia

Today I was sent a quote that was attributed to Buddha. It said: “Buddha was asked, ‘What have you gained from meditation?’ He replied, ‘Nothing! But let me tell you what I have lost. Anger, Anxiety, Depression, Insecurity, Fear of Old Age and Death.” I loved the quote but decided to check it out. While it can be found all over the internet, it was listed under fake Buddha quotes.

An earlier version of the quote is found in the 1973 publication of World Buddhism, Volume 22 by the World Fellowship of Buddhists. It was not directly attributed to Buddha.

It may be stating the case too strongly to say that in meditation one seeks to gain nothing. For there is an increase in happiness and peace of mind. But when asked, “What have you gained from meditation?” the answer would be: “It is not what I have gained that is important but rather what I have diminished, namely, greed, hatred, and delusion.”

I like thinking of meditation in this way.

Twenty Pounds of Cigarette Butts

This past Saturday, thirteen members of the Seattle area part of the PNW Litter Project made it possible to keep 20 pounds of cigarette butts out of landfills, waterways and stomachs of birds and other forms of wildlife.

Cigarette butts are way more toxic than you might think. They are NOT made of cotton, they are made of cellulose acetate tow and they can take decades to degrade. Investigators in a San Diego State University study once discovered that if you put fathead minnows and top smelt in a liter of water that also contains a single cigarette butt, half of the fish will die.

We have been picking up cigarette butts for the last three years. This particular work party was held in the International District of Seattle and was in honor of Kick Butts Day, an annual celebration of youth leadership and activism in the fight against tobacco use. The event is organized by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and sponsored by the United Health Foundation.

The weather forecast for Saturday was dismal, one inch of rain was predicted. Nature graced us however. While it was cold and windy and everything was wet due to the rain that had fallen the previous night, there was no rainfall during the 1 ½ to 2 hours we worked.

I like to believe that Mother Nature was pleased with us because after we finished, the wind died down and it was sunny for a good part of the day!

Tomorrow I will be packing up the 20 pounds of cigarette butts and mailing them to TerraCycle where they will be turned into plastic pallets!

The Hing Hay Park Dragon

This beautiful and incredible mural is located at Hing Hay Park (409 Maynard Ave. S) in the International District of Seattle. It was painted by John Woo in 1977 using acrylic paint on concrete. The painting depicts Asian American struggles with dragon.

Wikipedia has this to say about dragons in Chinese culture:

Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricane, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck for people who are worthy of it.

Post written for the Eclectic Corner: Street Life Challenge and the Weekly Photo Challenge: Walls

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

The empty lot behind my house is generally completely overgrown with blackberry vines. Over the years, they have damaged and even killed trees, so occasionally I clear away as many of the vines as I can. Two days ago, I hired a friend to help with the clearing. He did an amazing amount of work during the four or five hours he was there.

The lot is on a steep hill. At one point, he and I noticed that there were some yellow daffodils towards the bottom of the lot. They were beautiful and it was intriguing to see them rising out of the mass of dried blackberry vines. They looked bigger to us than they do in the picture below.

During the next hours, I couldn’t get them out of my mind. If they were this big from a distance, what would they look like if I was closer? As evening approached, I decided to plant some potato starts in one area where my friend had cleared the blackberry vines. As I did that, I kept glancing at the flowers. I wanted to see them up close.

I gingerly made my way towards them, my arms and legs getting pricked by the vines as I walked. Soon I came to a steep drop off. There were years of vines piled up there and I couldn’t see the land below them. There was no doubt in my mind that if I stepped into that mass, I would fall and be immersed in a very painful situation.

How else could I get there? I looked north and noticed an area where there were no blackberries. Maybe I could get to the flowers that way! It was at that time, the saying, “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” first came to mind.

I made it down the steep hill and as you can tell from the pictures above, I could even see the flowers, but I still couldn’t get to them. Once again, the blackberry vines were too thick.

I looked south and thought I saw an area that had fewer vines, so I made my way back to the center of the lot and surveyed the situation. There was no way for me to get to that clearer patch other than to step into the mire that had looked so unsafe to me. I knew I was too tired to be doing that so decided it was time to stop for the day.

The next morning, my mind was still on the daffodils. I walked down the hill to check the terrain again. After a night of rest, the center area didn’t seem so daunting. I could even see the ground under the vines. I decided to go back to the house, exchange my sneakers for heavy boots and pick up a tool to cut (or beat down!) the blackberry vines.

That plan worked great. I soon made my way to the small clearing on the south part of the lot. I noticed a big mushroom and an area of bamboo along the way.

I continued on, cutting the vines as needed. Before I knew it, I could see the flowers before me.

With renewed vigor I worked towards my goal. Before long I was very close!

And then I was there!

The daffodils were so beautiful

But…. what’s that? Something is moving in the inside of the middle daffodil! Look closely below, can you see what I saw?

I was fascinated. Watch the progression as the scene unfolded!

I thought it was a winged insect at first but when it stretched out completely, it appeared to be a spider. The top two legs were held close together most of the time, which had given the appearance of wings. Do any of you who are reading this know what kind of spider it is?

What a grand adventure I had had. I loved seeing the flowers up close, and then to have the unknown creature come out of one of them was such a bonus. I wrote a poem about my experience with the spider in Nature’s Miracle. (I also wrote about another “adventure” on this property last June in A Journey into the Jungle.)

Note: I looked up information about the phrase “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.” According to Wikipedia, it was the name of a folk song that became part of the American Civil Rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Watching that video led me to this one. The song is “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” The slide show is so good…. and a trip down memory lane for me.

Who would have guessed that this post would have ended in this way? I sure wouldn’t have. To me, that is what living in the moment is all about!

The View

When I remodeled my house in the mid 80’s, the kitchen windows were boarded up for three months. The day the boards were taken down, I was treated to a view that was breathtaking. While the tree is much bigger now, I feel as moved by what I am seeing from my kitchen window today as I did on that day in the 80’s. (In the 80’s it reached this stage mid April. Due to the warm winter, it is in full bloom on March 9.)

I’ve shared pictures of this tree several times lately but here is a collage of the progression between February 20 and today.

February 20

March 4

March 9

An Offering (Haiku)

Handful of petals
Offering to the Mother
From my heart to hers

The Haiku was written about a Bhagavati Puja I attended last night. The photographs were taken after the puja had ended.

The Bhagavati Seva Puja, is an ancient Vedic puja ceremony done to restore balance in the environment and bring peace within us and the world. It is a very beneficial puja performed to keep us in harmony with cosmic forces, thereby removing and overcoming the sorrows of life and bringing spiritual upliftment.

A Day of Challenges!

Today was one of those days where I had “plans” but all of them changed.

It started with me waking up at 1:45 a.m. I had been dreaming about Sanskrit and about blogging, something that is happening with increasing frequency, but thankfully it is not usually that early. As I moved from a dream state into a more conscious state of mind, the idea of posting a Sanskrit declension matrix by making a Power Point slide show came to my mind. Then the idea of adding audio to it surfaced.

I have helped others with Power Point slide shows before but only by typing in the words. I had never done a real one and I certainly had never put audio to one. As I lay there sleepless, I started pondering how to do it. Around 3:00 a.m., since sleep didn’t seem to be coming, I got up.

I went back to bed for about an hour and a half at 5:00 a.m. and then spent most of the day working on this project. The slide show went together quickly and even the audio was reasonably easy to figure out. But then came getting correct pronunciation, correct timing and most time consuming of all, finding a way to put it into a format that the blog would accept. That last part took until 7:45 tonight! But with Grace and persistance, I finished it!

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that every noun in Sanskrit may have 7 or 8 different cases. You can identify those cases by how the word ends.

Cases:

1st case is the subject
2nd case is the object
3rd case – “with” (with a fork)
4th case- “for” (for the beggar)
5th case- “from” (from the city)
6th case- possessive or “of” (boy’s; of the boy)
7th case- “in, at, on”

The slide show will present the declensions for the pronoun “aham” which means “I”. Singular, dual (2 people) and plural (i.e. three or more) forms will be presented for each of the seven cases. You will notice that some of the words are the same but have different meanings. In those instances, we have to read the word in a sentence to determine the meaning.

So with that for an introduction, here is my PowerPoint Slide Show with Audio of the declensions for the word “aham”! (In hindsight, it would have been helpful for me to put the case number and whether the word was singular, dual or plural on the slides, but even this way it gives you a good idea what the process is like!) I hope you enjoy it.