We are spoilt for choice! So many images to choose from and all available to be used.
There are over 6,000 photographs of Buddhist archeological sites, pilgrimage centres, and temples in SE Asia, as well as Videos, Maps, Posters, etc. on this website, please feel free to use the photographs to make more works with them, in accordance with the Creative Commons license on the page where you find them.
Photo Dharma
Here is a photograph from the site.
Talking to a chap this morning about his sewing/pattern making instructor who he obviously admires and appreciates greatly. I’d pass her pins all day! he said. Yep, that’s devotion I thought.
Unfortunately it’s all too easy to miss out on simple devotion born of respect and gratitude. Non of us want to tip over into servile behaviour after all.
A hat tip to the chap who, at 70 has taken up pattern making and fashion design.
Yesterday these sheep came running towards me from all directions, lambs jumping and leaping and all together, Ewes and lambs, they wanted something. The noise of their cries was something to behold. People do say the pasture is exceptionally late in greening. In fact there isn’t any greening at all that I can see. Farmers are reporting more lamb deaths this year than ususal. So animal suffering out there on the fells and hills right now and with little hope of an improvement in the weather in the near future. Spare a thought for our starving friends.
And there is somebody out there in Derbyshire walking her socks off (well hopefully not literally) in preparation for her impending hike along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. Adrienne is also preparing to make blog posts to The Merit of Walking as she goes. Here is a post she just made from some windy hill. Erm, no it comes to us from the Grouse Inn where she was eating sticky toffee pudding!
Adrienne has obviously been doing more than recreational walking. At the top of the post she writes:
I have arrived –
I am home –
my destination
in each step.
To speak or not to speak? How to frame what to say? Is it good to speak anyway. Is now a good time? That’s a really important question. It necessarily builds in a life saving pause between thought/feeling and action. A cooling moment when the heat is rising and the compulsion to speak, or write, is almost overwhelming. Thankfully there isn’t anything really important or pressing I need to communicate right at this moment.
While going through my bookmarked pages, something I do when looking for blogging inspiration, I came across Marshall Rosenberg talking about the basics of Non Violent Communication. I’ve not always connected so well with NVC as it is commonly passed along. This site makes the whole thing more easily understandable and less, how do we say, verbally stultifying. I’ll return and take a longer look.
In the mean time there is nothing that can replace the simple act of sitting still. A moment to cool, whatever the weather!
When I bumped into an article about happiness in the very excellent Brain Pickings site I immediately launched into Ken Dodd’s catchy song, Happiness. In 1964 this song made it to 31 in the Hit Parade. Interestingly a year later in 1965 his song Tears made it all the way to number one and stayed there for quite some weeks!
Here’s a couple of stanzas from Happiness for old times sake. And to reflect on too.
Happiness is a field of grain
Turning its face to the falling rain
I can see it in the sunshine, I breathe it in the air
Happiness happiness everywhereA wise old man told me one time
Happiness is a frame of mind
When you go to measuring my success
Don’t count my money count my happiness
Ken Dodd – Happiness
One can only surmise that between singing Happiness and Tears a year later something happened in Ken Dodds life. He has certainly stood the test of time, he is still touring! Tears can be about grief and sorrow and the grief around regret. That would be regret about something in the past. An action, an attitude; words spoken, deeds not done or deeds unwise and harmful.
Harbouring regret is to live partly in the past, or quite a bit in the past for that matter. What is to be done to move on? That’s to travel one’s day in an immediate kind of way as talked about in this article The Science of How your Mind-Wandering Is Robbing You of Happiness.
I know of no other way than to return to the flow of what is here now, internally and externally. That’s to direct ones attention time and time, without the demand/expectation/requirement to be happy. ‘Tis fleeting after all!