Greetings,
A simple joy is being in Hanoi savoring delicious Chinese tea.
I am liberated from tolerating the tyranny at a private Catholic school in Jakarta. I completed my penance. A beautiful universe.
It feels fantastic to be back in the University of the Street. So it goes.
Metta.
Greetings,
Roshi likens the breath during zazen to a windshield wiper,
each inhalation and exhalation simply cleaning the dust from one's mind,
the way a wiper cleans a windshield.
Metta.
Bali sunset light. A light of soft gentle music from a choir of painters. A tapestry on a loom of sky. Mountains stand strong and silent in the distance.
Ducks settle down in their straw hut as a young waitress reads in an upstairs section of a bamboo restaurant. Business is slow. Downstairs a child cries as someone slices dark green vegetables on a chopping block mixed with laughter. Motorcycles race along a twisted road blazing shrill horns. Birds and gekkos create twilight music as day slowly fades.
A narrow dusty dirt uphill path winds through the jungle. A woman with deeply lined brown skin wearing a purple sarong passes in and out of shadows. She maintains a steady pace balancing a stack of red bricks on a torn dirty yellow towel wrapped around her head. Her brown eyes glance down at the rocky terrain and up, straight ahead.
A gaunt rice farmer cleans debris from around rice stalks in a paddy near Monkey Forest Road. He wears faded blue shorts, a torn yellow t-shirt and sweat-soiled straw hat.
He pulls, smooths, and pats thick wet muddy soil in the water while tossing clumps on a pile of rocks at a construction project.
As daylight escapes he moves along a rice paddy terrace, stopping to splash water on his arms and legs removing the mud of his day with strong fingers and hands sliding up and down leather skin.
Picking up an old hoe, he places it on a thin shoulder and continues along narrow edges inspecting adjacent paddies. Calloused feet trace a zig-zag pattern toward a dark horizen of trees and thick tropical forest. His figure becomes smaller and smaller.
A slight breeze moves through green rice. Rice paddy water stands silent.
Metta.
A young Japanese couple walked on the sandy path leading from the south end of the is-land.
He carried a heavy black back pack and white plastic bag. His face was light and happy. Filled with hope.
Filled with hope and expectations. He imagined they were lost on a deserted is-land, a paradise away from family, friends, work, pressure, stress, telecommunications, machines, sushi and caged animals.
His wife, a thin thing, wore a pink sun hat-bonnet, white shorts covering pale legs, a white blouse and low heeled brown open toed backed shoes. Her face was severe. She studied grounded sand with pinpoint black eyes. Her shoes were the problem in the sand - slippery, no grip and tiresome treading. It was a struggle to keep up with her happy husband. She was always behind.
She was always behind his long shadow.
She swallowed her displeasure, the apparently endless future sand path and trudged on in silence. Her Tao. Grains of sand in her hourglass.
He was a boy ant, seeing seas ceaselessly churning blue and white waves, distant flat deep blue waters, a rising volcanic mountain surrounded by clouds, feeling crisp air on his face, maintaining a steady pace.
They didn't see the cemetery to their right, the green grove, rune coral fragments, solitary green and white headstones with Arabic script or a dancing delicate spider's web reflecting 1,001 points of diamond light.
Then they disappeared.
(Translated by Wave)
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