Life - The Joy Formidable

It is right there, all around us.  It lives within our eyes, hearts, minds (if we allow it).

Wolfs Law - The Joy Formidable from pd3 on Vimeo.

Wislawa Szymborska

Utopia

 by Wislawa Szymborska



Utopia
Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.


http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1996/poems-1-e.html

At the Center- the Question

From Zen Master Dogen.....a poem on impermanence:

To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops.
Shaken from a crane's bill.


Even something as tiny as a dewdrop can reflect the moon and the entire night sky--
its beauty made even more so, because of its fleeting nature.

We are all passing through....in the blink of an eye!

]

Life

Our wonder dog, Carmen, who is 12 1/2 years old (as far as we know) has been diagnosed with cancer. Life....it's forever changing. The 2 1/2 years we've had Carmen have been insightful. I wonder if we could live without a dog in our lives. She is so open and accepting!

 Below, I've embedded one of my favorite poems and certainly the best one I know of that relates to dogs.

Life goes on and is full of things to be grateful for.  We try to remember these things when we stumble over rocks of some kind.  It is, in fact, bursting with beauty...perhaps more so because of its impermanence.  Here is a video that reminded me of that.

Alchemy from Henry Jun Wah Lee / Evosia on Vimeo.