the shape of a pebble

The Buddha says, ideally, you want to make your mind like a broken gong. People can hit it, but there’s no reverberation.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Broken Gong”

Hiking The Ridge Trail

    To my west, the Montezuma Hills and the Vaca Mountains mark the edge of my flat valley and house the poison oak, rattlesnakes, deer, raccoons, and owls. The bones of these mountains, so low that they are almost hills, are shale, sandstone, and basaltic rock dating back to the Cretaceous age. Putah Creek and Cache drain the region to the east. Putah Creek is dammed to form Lake Berryessa, covering what was once a lovely canyon.

All day hiking the ridge trail
To picnic on the big flat rock
That overlooks Lake Berryessa.
Spring flowers, sunshine,
And an avocado sandwich.

James Lee Jobe

Vincent Van Gogh - Avenue Of Flowering Chestnut Trees - April 1889

Buddha taught that everyone and everything is interrelated. We cannot leave out anything or make one kind of spiritual consciousness superior and the other inferior. 

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, “Difference and Harmony”

The shape of a pebble.

    The ocean is everywhere. She kisses the shore, she floats in clouds. The ocean exists even in the shape of a pebble on the prairie floor. She was here before man, indeed, the first land creatures came from the ocean. Water is life, we need it like we need the sunlight.

Walking into the cold sea,
the world seems to swallow me.
Life is wet, and brief.

James Lee Jobe

Link: Haiku by Etheridge Knight

I don't want much; to change hate into love, revenge into forgiveness, war into peace, death into life. That's all.

JLJ

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James