No Color To Wear Off.  (Hakuin Ekaku  1685-1768)

“Spirit Gathers Together; Honesty Should Pass”, Tōgō Heihachirō, Taishō period, dated 1916 (5th Year of the Taishō Era), Harvard Art Museums: Calligraphy

Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Professor and Mrs. Toshikazu Oyama Size: H. 128.3 x W. 52.4 cm (50 ½ x 20 5/8 in.) Medium: Hanging scroll; ink on paper, with signature reading “Tōgō sho”

https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/202308

For those for whom it matters

Hallucinogen in 'magic mushrooms' relieves depression in the largest clinical trial to date

https://www.livescience.com/psilocybin-magic-mushroom-depression-trial-results

Resilience of the rivers

ཡར་ཀླུངས་གཙང་པོ་, the Yarlung Tsangpo river of Tibet, also known as 雅魯藏布江 or as the river of the roof of the world, is the highest watercourse on earth. Called the “Everest of Rivers” because of the extreme conditions in which it flows and its lofty elevation which averages about 4000 meters, Yarlung Tsangpo starts from the Angsi Glacier and runs across Tibet, India and then meets the Bay of Bengal. It is the Upper stream of Brahmaputra River and has to navigate its way through multiple mountain ranges. While leaving the Tibetan Plateau, the river forms the world’s largest and deepest canyon, 雅魯藏布大峽谷 Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, which is comparatively much longer than the Grand Canyon of America.

Noûs: a river is stronger than any mountain.

Its way, ever searching, ever flowing, always finds its path around any obstacle. The true strength of the flow shows. Drawn by its pull to the sea, bolstered by gravity, every river seeks out its path, creates it.

And the canyons  resulting from this search, are magnificent pieces of natural art which serve as a reminder, that in nature, water always cuts rock.

道德經 Dao De Jing [Chapter 36]

柔胜刚， 弱胜强。

The soft overcomes the hard; and the weak the strong

“But what's puzzling you Is the nature of my game”

All beings by nature are Buddhas, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddhas.

Hakuin Ekaku (via aspiritualwarrior)

"Before enlightenment, no one can rely on strength. Enlightenment comes across by itself, and enlightenment can only be helped by a ray of enlightened power." Dogen Zenji

[Dogen Zenji (19 January 1200 - 22 September 1253) was a Japanese monk, writer, poet, philosopher and Zen master, and the founder of the Soto sect in Japan.]

Being lost and being enlightened are like two sides of the same coin, in fact they are one and the same. So you don't have to be in panic to seek enlightenment, but when you are lost, you should just be lost. 

You may try the hardest to “enlightenment, enlightenment” and think, for example, that we must do Zazen sitting meditation, read Buddhist scriptures, and so on.

But it is a force beyond enlightenment. Enlightenment comes to you far beyond enlightenment. In other words, Dogen teaches us that enlightenment has nothing to do with the efforts we make to try our hardest to find a way to become enlightened. Enlightenment comes one day out of the blue. So if you are lost now, then do not hesitate to be lost. Not ‘more lost’, but ‘firmly lost’. 

It's okay to be ‘just lost.’ Just think so and just be lost. 

💙Metamorphosis💙

The real sign of accomplishment is the decreasing of your afflictive emotions, and that your mind is becoming more peaceful. ~ Yangthang Rinpoche