Photos

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Letters A or B

~ Madame Zenista ~ 9 Comments

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Letters A or B

 

Baby Monochrome # 001

 

Boyhood Monochrome # 002

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All I ask, the Heaven above..

~ Madame Zenista ~ 31 Comments

The Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge:  The Road Taken   and Wanderlust
(Update: Umm… so having felt a …er..wee bit guilty about using a post from a past challenge, here is the dedicated one for Wanderlust: Oh Wanderlust! The places you take me… ) 

Enroute to Macknac Island, Michigan. Skyscspe # 010. #nofilter

All I Ask Is Heaven Above…

LUMINOUS sapphire skies
Woolgathering in glee
Blowing thinking-clouds
Bubbles of fantasy…

IN amber fairy dust
Blooms n’ buzzing bees
Racing to the horizon
The rolling emerald fields

THIS wanderlust I love
Nothing more I seek
All I ask, the heaven above
And the road below me…

********

Road Trip. 2016. To Mackinac Island. Some iPhone pictures of the road, taken on the road. No filter or enhancing was needed for the stunning blues and greens.

Blue sky white clouds green fields Upper Pure Michigan UP madame-zenista.com summer
Rolling fields in somewhere in northern Michigan. Skyscape # 011. #nofitler

On reaching the Mackinaw City, we took a ferry to the Mackinac Island all bikes no motor vehicles.

Mackinac Island Street Biking Upper Pure Michigan UP madame-zenista.com summer
The road in Mackinac Island where only bikes are allowed. Summer 2016.
Mackinac Island Lilac Tree Hotel madame-Zenistacom summer bikes
This ‘Lilac Tree Hotel’ by the roadside sporting lilac flower baskets. Mackinac Island.

Ever since I read it the first time in high school, R.L. Stevenson’s The Vagabond stayed with as a beautiful memory appealing my ‘wanderer self’.  I LOVE this poem. I cant help but reproduce it here and see if you feel it speak to your soul as it did to mine.

The Vagabond by Robert Louis Stevenson

Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway night me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river —
There’s the life for a man like me,
There’s the life for ever.
Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o’er me;
Give the face of earth around
And the road before me.
Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I seek, the heaven above
And the road below me.
Or let autumn fall on me
Where afield I linger,
Silencing the bird on tree,
Biting the blue finger;
White as meal the frosty field —
Warm the fireside haven —
Not to autumn will I yield,
Not to winter even!
Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o’er me;
Give the face of earth around,
And the road before me.
Wealth I ask not, hope, nor love,
Nor a friend to know me.
All I ask, the heaven above
And the road below me.

My Solitude, sunset, the sea

~ Madame Zenista ~ 15 Comments

The Daily Post: A Good Match -Photo Challenge. The sunset and the sea is better than a good match for my solitude at the final hours of the day…

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I watch the sunset at the South Padre Islands in 2015. Skyscape # 008


Eyes wide shut under the flying veil of hair

Rumbling ocean reverberates, flushing the day’s wear

Gulls forlorn cawing, split the brined air

Emotions shudder helpless, on a wing ‘n a prayer

Encompassing solitude deepens, skins my soul bare

By the calming sea, ‘n the darkening glare

Of the crimson sunset, I feel so aware…

 

 

The great night of Shiva, tonight.

~ Madame Zenista ~ 5 Comments

Tonight is Maha-Shiva-Ratri [maha – great, ratri – night], one of the most important of the all the Hindu festivals. Commonly, Shiva represents one of the three principal deities in the Hindu trinity. But more importantly Shiva represents the formless and the infinite divinity. Tonight marks the celebration of the limitless dimension in oneself by identifying it with the Universal infinite principle of Shiva.

The occasion behooves the mention of Adi Shankara, the young Indian scholar and philosopher from the 8th century AD, who propounded the concept of Advaita or non-dualism (a-non, dvaita-two/dual). Advaita holds that the Creator is not distinct or separate from the Creation; that finite beings born of the Infinite are, therefore, themselves Infinite. So, as a young boy of eight wandering  in search of a guru, Shankara encounters a seer who asks him “who are you?” Shankara responds in these six exalted Sanskrit stanzas that would be known as the Atma Shatakam. Below is a concise and beautiful translation of the sublime verses I took from the acclaimed spiritual classic and one of my favorite books, Autobiography Of A Yogi.

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Atmashatakam by Adi Shankara. (Photo: South Padre Islands Beach. #nofilter)

One of the renditions of Atma Shaktakam (also called Nirvana Shatakam) that I love the best is from the album Sacred Chants of Shiva:

Further reading:

Anger: the monk’s little story

~ Madame Zenista ~ 16 Comments

 

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An evening in Rancho Viejo, Texas. The ambience– so dramatic and beautiful. None can beat Nature’s own filter! Just like being in a 3 dimensional painting … #nofilter (Skyscape # 007)

The Little Story: To meditate alone with no interruptions, a monk decided to go to a nearby lake. He took a boat and moored it in the middle of the lake, closed his eyes and began meditating. After a few hours of uninterrupted solitude passed and he was in a deep meditative state, when suddenly, he felt the bump of another boat colliding with his own. His eyes were closed still, but he was agitated, and felt his anger rising.  By the time he opened his eyes, he was about to scream at the boatman who had so carelessly disturbed his meditation. On opening his eyes, however, he was startled to find that it was just another empty boat that probably got untethered and floated to the middle of the lake.

That moment the monk had a profound realization: all the anger was within him; it merely needed the bump of an external object to provoke it out of him. And that moment on, whenever he came across someone who irritated or provoked him to anger, he reminded himself that the other person was merely an empty boat; it is he who has the choice to react independent of the whatever the other person did.

There have been times when I would feel frustrated and hopeless about things and myself, and it gave way to so much anger I didn’t know I was capable of. It is easy when you think you have a wrongdoer in your life to blame. But in absence any villains, one confronts the stark reality of one’s own nature. After the fact, realizing how it was making others feel would kill me. I felt powerless and at mercy of this intensity of the emotion I had no explanation for. Thats when I stumbled upon this story.

It hit me in the head like a brick. Past the cleverness of the story and the intellectual stimulation such stories might give, a space needs to be created for a lot of work to be done on self: take it in, assimilate the knowledge, contemplate on it until it shines back out as wisdom, becoming a part of one’s nature.

I wonder if you can relate to it…