Liminal

 "New pond.
No sound of a frog
Jumping in.
...
Past has passed away.
Future has not arrived.
Present does not remain.
...
I don’t tell the murky world
to turn pure.
I purify myself
and check my reflection in
the water of the valley brook."

- Ryōkan (1758 - 1831)

Wintery Mists

"In darkness it is most bright,
while hidden all the more manifest.
The crane dreams in the wintery mists.
The autumn waters flow far in the distance."

- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)
Cultivating the Empty Field:
The Silent Illumination of Zen Buddhist Master Hongzhi

Dissolving Mirror

"The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection,
and the water has no mind to retain their image."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

There is a Cause

"To return to the difficulty which has been stated with respect both to definitions and to numbers, what is the cause of their unity? In the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something beside the parts, there is a cause."

 - Aristotle (384–322 BC)

Immense Silence

 "But for the time being, around my place at least, the air is untroubled, and I become aware for the first time today of the immense silence in which I am lost. Not a silence so much as a great stillness - for there are few sounds: the croak of some bird in a juniper tree, an eddy of wind which passes and fades like a sigh, the ticking of the watch on my wrist - slight noises which break the sensation of absolute silence but at the same time exaggerate my sense of the surrounding, overwhelming peace. A suspension of time, a continuous present. If I look at the small device strapped to my wrist the numbers, even the sweeping second hand, seem meaningless, almost ridiculous. No travelers, no campers, no wanderers have come to this part of the desert today and for a few moments I feel and realize that I am very much alone."

- Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989)

Luminous Insistence

"In some photographs the essence of light and space dominate; in others, the substance of rock and wood, and the luminous insistence of growing things ... It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to spectators."

- Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)

Shadow Belongs to Light

"All material in nature, the mountains
and the streams and the air and we,
are made of Light which has been spent, and
this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow,
and the shadow belongs to Light."

- Louis Kahn (1901 - 1974)