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If only I could
Float along on a surf of blossoms
I recall so well:
How they poured down from the heights
Like a cascade of white cloud.

~Saigyo

If I no longer think
of reality
as reality,
what reason would I have
to think of dreams as dreams?

~Saigyo

I was talking to my husband about how I thought bokeh was key to what I was searching for in my photography, in terms of the reality Saigyo means. He told me he thought there was a metaphor there about focus, and that's right, I think there's something about a tight, shallow focus making some things pop against the blur--so we really see them. And also in the blur itself, distinctions between objects disappear, and everything appears as one...well, I'm still musing about all this, but there is a metaphor in the bokeh, that by concentrating very hard on the present moment, on that which is right there in front of us, we can have the insight--the enlightenment, the awakening--that all is one reality, and one of great beauty and peace. Well, that's the goal anyway--wouldn't it be nice to see bokeh even without the camera? :0)

I hope, my friends, that you had the best of weekends...and I wish you and yours much joy as we start a new week!

the Buddha's
westward waves of wisteria
rustling

~Issa

HBW, my friends! Joy to all of you :0)

Edit: I think I've caught up with all my contacts...I'm unplugging and wishing you all the best of weekends!

Limitations gone:
Since my mind fixed on the moon,
Clarity and serenity
Make something for which
There's no end in sight.

~Saigyo

How do you reconcile the imaginative process required to make a poem or create an image with the meditative life necessary to achieve enlightenment, which requires focusing on direct experience, and seeing things as they really are? In so many of these poems, enlightenment becomes possible because of time spent contemplating blossoms, or the moon, and I believe the constant usage of these specific terms is meant to actually disassociate meaning from them, to destroy them as concepts, so that we're left with the actual moon, and real blossoms...so that the poem somehow shocks us awake. (I've just been reading how koans are designed to do that, but I think these poems are meant to serve the same function.)

An image like this one is open to so many interpretations--and our personal and cultural associations with night are likely to influence what it means to us. For me, night is a time for sitting quietly outside, listening to crickets and frogs, drinking a glass of wine or cup of tea, relaxing and feeling at great peace--so that certainly influenced my processing of this. But how do you create an image like these poems, an image meant to break down concepts, to force the viewer to see something fresh without associations, to encounter the reality of these blossoms? (And as reality to a Buddhist is finally seeing that everything is one and forever, it wouldn't matter that this is just an image, that these flowers are already gone, that this photo was taken during the day rather than under the moon, that they grow in a different part of the world than the person seeing them...none of that should matter at all.) That's the big question, how to make such an image, and something I'd very much like to figure out--at least it will be wonderful trying :0)

Regardless of the paths we choose to get there, wishing us all the clarity and serenity these poets found and shared so beautifully, their boundless reality, and their limitless sight.

into the misty field
let's go!
refreshing our souls

~Issa