icicles melt
tears of mistreated children
searching sun’s glow
listening with compassion
pillars shimmer promise
©Tournesol ’16/02/21
Compassion heals (haiga)
Daily Moments ~ Feb 20 – surprise visits (haibun)
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
blue canvas (haibun)
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
Thinking of death, gives life more meaning (haibun) Episode 4
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
slipping (tanka) “through the chinks comes the light”
rocking gently
sinks in a deep slumber
lull of the water
between sudden arrests
slips in the shimmering abyss
© Tournesol’16/02/19
What happens exactly as you die? In the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying Sogyal Rinpoche explains it through the idea/ thought of bardo. “Bardo” means “inbetween” and its a kind of transition-mode. Let us look further in the depth of the meaning of bardo, maybe than we can understand it 100%.
Through the chinks comes the light
The original meaning of bardo is, the space between the moment of dying and reincarnation / rebirth. As we ‘dive’ deeper into this matter than we discover more than one bardo. Let’s go …
First there is the bardo of living and dying. This is a painful bardo, but also the moment that the nature of spirit / soul becomes real and in a way breaks through the armor of the body. This we can see in, for example, the story of Easter as Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane and asks His Father, God, to take away the cup of poison. Than He is arrested and indures the pain of 39 lashes and the crucifixion. As He dies He commands His Spirit to His Father. This is what we can call the bardo of living and dying.
What follows is the bardo which is called the shining bardo or dharmata, the state of consciousness / mind after death. To explain this shining bardo, wasn’t easy, because I could not find something to explain it with. Than I got a revelation. This shining bardo you can see as a bright light, the radiation of the pure nature of spirit / mind. It’s a state of pure happiness. In a way this you can see as what is happening as you (someone) has a Near Death Experience (NDE). I ran into a few stories about NDE when I was preparing these episodes. As you read the reports about NDE than everyone sees a bright light in which shadows are moving, ancestors mostly, but angels too.
This shining bardo doesn’t stay forever. Sometimes it takes / endures seven days, but it can also take seven weeks.
The next bardo is called the bardo of becoming. The consciousness / mind finds a new place, in a new body and a new life gets started. This we can also see in the story of Easter. After three days, and taht’s very fast as we compare this with the Tibetan idea about living and dying, Jesus rises from the grave. He conquered dead and became an enlightened being who walks a short time on this earth and than rises to Heaven making the Holy Spirit, a kind of reborn energy, avalable to the world. With His ressurection and entering Heaven He broke the Circle of Bardo, as did Buddha.
In Tibetan tradition of bardo the songs from The Book of the Dead were recited by the monks to lead the spirit. Rinpoche goes further in this idea and describes his ideas in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. In his book he sees life as it is as a bardo. The bardo between birth and the moment of sying, life in itself is a transition. It’s a time in which we learn, contemplate, meditate and prepare on death.
Rinpoche goes even further, a period of uncertainty can also be a bardo. For example, the moment you come home and see that there has been a burglary while you were away. Or that moment between “I have bad news” and “I have to tell you …” At that moment the concrete of your reality breaks and you feel that the ground is disappearing beneath your feet. Than the realization comes … you see the essence. No more time for futilities. It’s a moment of truth … you can see what really is important.
This is what this Insight means … discover the truth by tearing down the veil. This is what happened as Jesus died at the cross. The veil that hid the Holy of Holies was torn apart exposing the holiest place in the temple and the revelation that Jesus really was the Son of God.
Our host’s response
To write a haiku, tanka or another Japanese poetry form about this 2nd Insight isn’t easy I think, but I had to try it myself (of course) and this is what came in mind, a haiku from my archives:
phoenix spreads its wings
after the dark cold winter night
finally spring
© Chèvrefeuille
staying on the path (tanka) Tibetan’s Mgur – religious poetry
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.
- Also known as Milarepa
our journey (haibun) Week #1 epsiode 2 The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Insight 1
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
We are travelers
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
daily moments Feb 19/16 – hunger pains (haibun)
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
Daily Moments Feb 18 ~ Happy Birthday Georgia! (tanka ~ haiku)
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
view from the top (tanka)
catching a view
that age old promise
walkin’ the beat
trying to reach the top
…just keep on walkin’
(c) Tournesol’16-02-17
Written for The Secret Keeper’s prompt: view walk promise beat old
Inspired by a poem I wrote earlier in free verse
Walk don t run free verse on meditative reflections Free Verse
walk
take your time
walk
do not climb
walk
do not run
breath in
breath out
walk
take your time
don’t beat
the clock
reaching for the top
walk
take your time
in the end
you will
get a view
crossing over
walk
take your time
breath in
breath out
seeking,
longing
that aged old promise
everlasting life
walk
take your time
breath in
breath out.
(c) Cheryl-Lynn 2016-02-17
Tournesol dans un Jardin 
