Poetry ~ Waka
She had spent a lazy weekend resting and soaking in tranquil solitude. Her son dropped by briefly unexpectedly. It was a pleasant surprise. It seemed to re-energize her and she later took the time to prepare her dinner with Indian spices and lots of vegetables spread over a bed of quinoa.
a mother’s love
soothing the heart
invites comfort food
© Tournesol’16/02/20
Daily Moments ~ Feb 20/16
I have always felt that we start in life being more visual or more auditory and eventually we become audiovisual. I found that so interesting with my children. My son started off as auditory and my daughter visual. And even if we seem to adapt in an audiovisual world, there are traits, I feel that are still predominant.
I did the test for fun and my results were Visual 31, Audio 43 and Kinesthetic 43 I was pleased to see the visual was as high as it was. In writing haiku, I sometimes struggle to find the words to express what I am seeing for I see with most of my senses. Watching a sunset seems to lower my heartbeat and yet my heart feels so filled with awe. Sitting by the river, the sounds of the current, the birds, the rustle of the leaves and seeing the white caps of the rapids can all be captured in one glance.
Walking in the arctic cold last weekend I wanted to see the mountainin Rougemont before the sun set. I managed to find a trail behind the local library and was able to take only a few photos before the bitter cold made my battery die.
blue canvas
backdrop for hills and orchards
sans red swirls
© Tournesol ’16/02/21
In the past few years I have been decluttering my home. I have started to give away cherished items to my children and will be giving them more this spring. My son asked me a few years ago if I was dying as he could not understand why I was doing this so soon in my life. I think this purging is symbolic of freeing myself so I can concentrate on things I love like reading, writing and making more time to volunteer and perhaps travel, something I put on hold for many years.
gathering leaves
autumn’s last vibrant breath
ready for winter
misty clouds form icicles
season’s final gems
© Tournesol’16/02/20
thinking about death gives life meaning
Our host, Chèvrefeuille says, “We all know that we will die someday. We also know that when this will happen we do not know, or what will be happening. Most of us don’t want to think about dying and in a way we hide for it. As I stated in an earlier post … “death is part of life, it’s the only certainty we have”.”
Here is his response:
Death is in my opinion part of life, without thinking about death we cannot live our life, or even better … without thinking about death we can not celebrate life. Look around you enjoy nature, enjoy the coming and going of the seasons in which life and death are each other’s best friends. If you look at living and dying as being part of nature, part of being human … than death can be giving meaning to life.
in the backyard
the old Sakura has lost his blossom
until next spring
© Chèvrefeuille
faith is the way
chanting mindfully
steers you on the path
distractions change the course
away from eternal bliss
© Tournesol ’16/02/19
Carpe Diem Tokubetsudesu 70 Tibetan’s Mgur, a religious form of poetry
The mgur as a primarily religious genre, dates chiefly from the time of the greatest of all Tibetan poets, Mi la ras pa* (1040-1123). Though his hundreds of mgur were not given their definitive written form until several centuries after his death, their influence on Tibetan culture seems to have been widespread from Mi la’s time onward, through their preservation in various oral versions and written recensions, and through the importance Mi la quickly assumed as a Tibetan Buddhist culture-hero. Mi la’s greatness lay in his ability to compose songs that combined the imagery, structural parallelism and expressive directness of ancient glu with distinctively Buddhist themes and Indian-inspired metrical schemes. In particular, Mi la ras pa—and thus the classical tradition of mgur—can be seen as inheriting two major influences:
(1) the early diffusion traditions of songs of “positive personal experience,” primarily secular in orientation and distinctly Tibetan in style, and
(2) the tradition—brought to Tibet by Mi la’s guru Mar pa—of tantric songs, those often spontaneous, always richly symbolic dohās, caryāgīti or vajragīti sung by Indian mahāsiddhas to express their spiritual realizations.
The themes, moods and styles of Mi la’s mgur range widely: though the Dharma almost always is the real subject, it is expressed in verses at various times simple or complex, devout or wrathful, puritanical or ribald, humorous or stern, intensely autobiographical or impersonally didactic. An example of one of this mgur (songs) composed by Mi la ras pa
Faith is the firm foundation of my house,
Diligence forms the high walls,
Meditation makes the huge bricks,
And Wisdom is the great corner-stone.
With these four things I build my castle,
And it will last as long as the Truth eternal!
Your worldly houses are delusions,
Mere prisons for the demons,
And so I would abandon and desert them.
The success of Mi la ras pa’s songs in helping to popularize Buddhism, combined with the innate Tibetan love of poetry and song, helped assure that in the centuries after Mi la, mgur composition came to be a widely practiced art.
She wondered where they all went. Some believe in heaven, purgatory and hell. Yet what if the first few moments after a death there is a limbo where spirits linger for their loved ones…stick around for as long as needed? What if there is a dimension invisible to the human eye except for those who have reached enlightenment?
Where will I be? Will I be in limbo a long time, passing through waiting in between?
passing through
floating in third dimensions
pending revival
© Tournesol ’16/02/19
Inspired by Carpe Theme Week #1 epsiode 2 The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Insight 1
Reincarnation is one of the central ideas of Tibetan Buddhism and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I hope to explain this (with the help of Soygal of course).
Rinpoche makes a difference between our “ego”, our daily personality, our “I”, the form / shape our psyche has in our body in which we live our life, and the deeper, natural consciousness, which is our essence.
What happens when we die? In fact only our body dies, but our consciousness “rises” to another new state of being, another dimension maybe. That is our rigpa, the absolute nature of mind (spirit), the consciousness before thoughts and emotions occur / rise. Later it will be reborn in another body.
Death is not the absolute end. Our body doesn’t exist anymore, but our consciousness travels on. The idea of dying can be paralyzing, but in this vision death is just a moment of transition. That makes the idea of death lighter: we are travelers, continuous on our way from one world to another.
Our host’s response
Finally our consciousness will reach enlightenment, maybe not in this life, but maybe in another life.
ghostly nebulae
covers the old graveyard
cherry blossom blooms
© Chèvrefeuille
Rushing to work, she couldn’t help but notice the homelessness in the Métro station. Each day at mid-day the same persons are at their “stations”. Another flight down and she reaches the train rails and watches another person getting ready to get set up upstairs next to the convenience store, as she sees every day. The man feeds her discreetly, respectfully, then pushes her wheelchair upstairs for a few hours where she sits…alone, waiting.
watching passersby
silent growls plead empathy
with hunger pains
© Tournesol ’16/02/19
Daily Moments Feb 19 2016
across the ocean
she writes at early dawn
I’m up at twilight
savouring her morning waka
my bedtime reading
tonight at midnight
wishing her a Happy Birthday
sending her cyber-hugs
un souhait sincère
une journée insolée
bonne fête, Cara!
© Tournesol ’16/02/18
Daily Moments ~ Feb 18 2016
wind blows from the North
moon comes and goes
ice forms on my path
© Tournesol ’16/02/17
The view of fresh fallen snow offers a promise of hope. She looks at the pure whiteness from her bedroom window and smiles. It was a welcoming mild day compared to the arctic weekend she’d just passed…the snow would be heavy yet sticky, just the right consistency to make snow forts, snowballs and snowmen. She saw children giggling and sliding in her mind’s eye.
Walking on the snow-covered sidewalks she noticed the grey skies threatening more snow but it was too mild…surely it may turn to rain or sleet. Mother Nature can get overwhelmed with the earth’s heating; she seemed dazed and confused.
Later shuffling through snow, its texture reminded her of cookie dough batter. You know when you add butter to that fluffy white flour and beat it until it all blends together. Her mind wandered to old childhood memories. Her GrandMaman would let her lick the bowl of batter…how she loved adding just a smidgen of sugar on the raw dough.
GrandMaman would spread the batter and let her granddaughter choose the cookie cutters of shapes of animals, stars or hearts depending on the occasion. Her favourites were the star and heart.
Walking along the street streets, she looked up at the grey skies
Searching
under veiled skies
love of her heart
© Tournesol’16/02/17
Daily Moments Feb 17 2016
rain and snow
nature’s dazed and confused
slip and slide
© Tournesol ’16/02/16
Daily Moments Feb 16 2016
Tournesol dans un Jardin 
