Meditation

Meditate on nature's endless cycle of creation and destruction.

Render and Thistle (2009) from Karl Cronin
Meditation is described as silencing the mind, removing extraneous thoughts and distractions so that concentration is increased and peace from the turmoil of a too busy world is achieved.
Here are thoughts and images of meditation and contemplation to soothe your soul perhaps relax you and direct you to paths of peace. Think and then stop.

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson 

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. 

Voltaire 

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large. 

Confucius

Divinely bent to meditation;

And in no worldly suits would he be mov’d,

To draw him from his holy exercise.

William Shakespeare, Richard III Act 3, Scene 7

If you mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.  In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.

Shunryu Suzuki

Is this a half lotus position?

Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you, as the wheels of the oxcart follow the footsteps of the ox. Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a pure mind, happiness will follow you, as a shadow clings to a form.

Buddha

I just like the idea of always thinking of nice things and hence extract the essence of niceness. Put beauty in your mind, contemplate it's glory and let it wash all over you. You will be trance like and you will find peace. You will be happy if all is beauty. Sleep and bathe in what is simply and deeply beautiful.

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Many years ago I knew a beautiful person who had waist length hair and possessed a radiant face. Some years later he arrived on my doorstep as a Hare Krishna and still as androgynous as Krishna himself. He stayed a few days and was still mesmerisingly radiant as he meditated naked in my home. 

Now relax and take time for the beauty of 
The Great Bell Chant

The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) from R Smittenaar on Vimeo.

Fire and Forest

Fire

Australia being an old dry country is prone to fire and has been for a very long time. So much of our vegetation depends on regular burns to encourage re-growth and seed distribution. It is a cycle that was aided by the indigenous population who regularly set controlled fires to help in their hunting. Fire, as elsewhere, is the centre of communal life, cooking and ceremony. One of the great turning points in mankind's development was the discovery of fire and how to preserve what was created by nature's lightning and eventually the discovery of how to make it. It is part of our soul to contemplate and be absorbed by the flame; the dance of the bright yellow fingers, the warmth, the light.

Ceremony and entertainment is made powerful with fire.

From Brian Kenny's channel
The Boy with Fire in His Eyes 

The boy with fire in his eyes

Stands there waiting.

It is his soul inside;

It keeps him standing. 

And if ever the fire goes out,

He will freeze in the cold.

It is his heat

And all that keeps him living. 

Or if it never is put to use,

It will consume him;

He will burn to the ground

His ashes left behind.

But if the fire blazes,

If kindled, kept and carried,

If the boy with fire in his eyes

Finds life inside that fire,

His fire will light the world,

Will pierce the mist,

A fire to drive the dark away

Forever and ever more.

By Daniel Nairn

SMALL FEET – Rivers [official video] from Oskar Wrango on Vimeo.

Boys playing with fire.

Forest

Mankind came down from the trees and walked upright across the grassy plains, but the safety of the forest as a place to hide, to forage, to sleep and to seek protection from the elements is second nature to us. Have you walked through the bush and felt the spirit of the plants that surround you. Have you been aware of the smell of life and the symbiotic nature of the exchange of carbon of which all living things are made and the oxygen which fires our life process.

From the Trees to the Grasslands

Meditate in the bush.

As mentioned Australia is prone to fire and is largely desert. Forests do exist but we mainly refer to of unique trees etc as the Bush or the Scrub. Huge Tropical Rain Forests do exist on the East Coast and we also have pre historic trees still growing. It is varied and one can still find the unknown, the unpopulated and the surroundings worthy of contemplation.

From the wonderful work of Eduardo Restrepo

http://cargocollective.com/eduardorestrepo

Forest Fantasy

'Boy in Forest' from the work of Vittorio Carvelli http://vittoriocarvelli.blogspot.com.au/

Also found in http://greatartclassicalnude.blogspot.com

Fantasy, Magic and Fawns also live in the Forest
Forest Light

Spirits of the Forest?
Performance from Marcel Antunez Roca - Barcelona
Amazing Work - http://marceliantunez.com/

HIPERMEMBRANA, (2007) fragment. XUPAMENT SCENE, from Marcel·lí Antunez Roca 

Pure Happiness in the Bush

Electric Chapel from kirkdify 

ScenicBoys: Happy Spring! from scenicboys 

Recycle Boy

A little humour - A different time.
A Cautionary Tale

In the line at the store, the check-out guy told an old man that he should bring his own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. The man apologised  and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day." 

The guy responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation didn't care enough to save our environment." He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day. 

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soft-drink bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the factory to be washed and sterilised and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower motor vehicle every time we had to go two blocks. But he was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 240 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that boy is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Queensland! In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a bubbler fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the tram or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one power-point in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. But we didn't have the green thing back then?

But we do now!


Other ways to be nice to the environment.

Our One and Only Beautiful Planet

Green Issues

Earth Rivers Mountains Seas Forests Plants Air Animals and Us

'In all things of nature there is something of the marvellous.' Aristotle

The Beautiful Planet

The Sea

"Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it." Genesis

The Horizon

 We have certainly multiplied beyond what may be sustainable and we have definitely subdued the earth but have we replenished it as we should? The glories and beauty of our planet are the treasures which have moulded and comforted mankind since our time began. The contemplation of nature is a need that must be satisfied and maintained. Our literature, our dreams, our religions and our sciences are drawn from what we see about us.  Our life depends on what we preserve of our world. From a garden of Eden to Elysian fields, from beginning to end, man has contemplated a perfect earth, nature in bloom, clear and sparkling waters, green hills and warm aromatic air. We know this is good so we need to protect it. For the first two centuries of western civilisation in Australia the ever spreading population attempted to master and tame the land, but today a realisation has emerged that to nurture the land, as had been done for millennia before, is the only way to have the land provide for its children. In cultures throughout history there existed gods and spirits of the earth. The gods and goddesses of fertility, the rains and the seasons, the spirits of the forest, the great Earth Mother and even those that inhabited new life were recognised, worshipped or appeased to ensure the continuation of life for the peoples of the lands. Many disturbed little of what nature had provided, many discovered from nature the ways of regeneration, such as the Aborigine's burning of the grasses and forests to promote future growth. That was the wisdom of the past which became lost. Mistreatment of the land however also began at the dawn of civilisation. In ancient Babylonia they made the land flourish by irrigation, but as states grew and negotiations of water control spread the lush garden of agriculture failed. Too much irrigation on a land too flat to have adequate drainage soon salted the soil, destroyed crops and the populations and power had to shift. This was 2000 years BC. Today we face many problems, but we know what we must do for this species to survive, we only lack the political will to do it on a large scale. We need to live beautifully with nature as innocents.

 'The Goal of life is living in agreement with nature' Zeno 335-564 BC

A Journey to Peach-Blossom Spring

A story by the writer Yuan Hongdao 1568 - 1610 from Gongan County in the Hubei Province China.

'When I had bid farewell to the Long brothers and was about to weigh anchor. Long Xiang came suddenly to praise the fine sights around Peach-Blossom-Spring. I said "It's a famous historical site, well worth visiting even if it has no beautiful scenery" So I ordered the boat to sail upstream, while Long Xiang travelled by land. He joined me at Hefu Mountain that evening. The next day, the Double Ninth Festival, we climbed to the mountain top. The two coloured rocks by the brook served as beautiful foils to the green pool, so we went down to sit there, not leaving until nearly noon. Our boat moored at Peach-Blossom-Spring County that evening The mountain scenery delighted our eyes, and the stream lashed angrily at the fish enclosure as I strolled up to the Confucian Temple. A hundred feet of flagstones, as level and smooth as water, gleamed crystal clear in the moonlight. Pavilions and streets enveloped in smoke were another wonderful feature of the mountain country. That night, chatting with the monks, I told them I was born in a region of rivers and lakes where there was not a single rock within a hundred li so that it was a pleasure to see even what looked like a hillock. What good luck had endowed this county with such beautiful hills and gullies? Could it be that landscapes too were determined by Karma? When the monks could not answer this, I retired for the night.'

Egypt and Nature

In the establishment of civilisation Egypt was perhaps unique with the annual flooding of the Nile which spread a layer of rich black soil over the fields of the Nile Valley. Agriculture was sustained by this fertile gift of nature, but on occasions the floods failed and so did the life and harmony of the people. It is even suggested that the end of the Old Kingdom was brought about by civil upheaval sparked by an unusually long period of drought and the subsequent famine. The earth, the elements and all that existed and sustained, found expression in the gods and from there to the king,  who was the presence of the gods on earth. The gods and king were integral in the maintenance of life and all about. In a funerary poem Sehetepibre who served under King Amenemhet III of the 12th Dynasty around 1800 BCE gave advice to his children for a proper plan of life which reflects the elements from which life is made good and the role of the king in such basics of the natural world.

"Adore the king, (Amenemhet III), living forever, in the midst of your bodies:

Enthrone his majesty in your hearts.

He is Esye (wisdom) in the hearts:

His two eyes, they search every body.

He is the Sun, seeing with his rays:

He illuminates the Two Lands more than the sun-disk.

He makes the Two Lands green more than a great Nile:

He hath filled the Two lands with strength.

He is life, cooling the nostrils:....

The treasures which he gives are food for those who are in his following:

..... His mouth is increase....."

In many cultures the earth and it's elements were identified as worthy of deification as the life of mankind depends on the behaviour, whims and productivity of nature. As the wisdom of sustaining the world about us was immediately obvious to man as he developed, so it should continue to be obvious to us

The World Heritage List - 582 cultural, 149 natural and 23 mixed properties in 129 States

  

AUSTRALIA'S NATURAL WONDERS FOR MANKIND TO ENJOY

The Great Barrier Reef

Kakadu National Park

Willandra Lakes Region

Tasmanian Wilderness

Lord Howe Island Group

Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park

Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves

Wet Tropics of Queensland

Shark Bay, Western Australia

Fraser Island Queensland

Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh/Naracoorte)

Heard and McDonald Islands

Macquarie Island

Greater Blue Mountains Area

Purnululu National Park 

Uluru, embedded in the centre of Australia is the world's largest monolith and one of the great natural wonders. The exposed tip rises 318m from the desert floor and it has a circumference of 9.4 km. It extends down over three and a half miles beneath the surface.  Approximately 500 million years ago it was part of the ocean floor at the centre of this continent and between 300 to 400 million years ago folding of the earth's surface caused it to rotate almost 90 degrees to its present position with the exposed surface worn over time. It is known for the different colours it appears to be throughout the day. Some Cave paintings on Uluru are considered to be ancient and indicate the length of time Aborigines have lived in the area. Traditional religious philosophy, Tjukurpa, provides an interpretation of the present landscape, flora, fauna and natural phenomenon in terms of the journeys and activities of ancestral beings and consequently binds the people socially, spiritually and historically to the land. Tjukurpa also acts as law and imposes a responsibility on the Aborigines to care for the natural environment. Of huge significance to the aboriginal inhabitants it has also become a great symbol for all Australians and for many as the spiritual heart of this country.       

 Canticle of the Sun

St. Francis of Assisi, Patron of Ecology 

Most high, all-powerful, all good, Lord!
All praise is yours, all glory, all honour and all blessing.
To you alone, Most High, do they belong.
No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce your name.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first my lord Brother Sun, Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendour!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars;
In the heavens you have made them, bright and precious and fair.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all the weather's moods, by which you cherish all that you have made.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water, so useful, lowly, precious, and pure.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten up the night.
How beautiful he is, how joyful! Full of power and strength.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth, our mother, who feeds us in her sovereignty and produces
Various fruits and coloured flowers and herbs.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through those who grant pardon 

For love of you; through those who endure Sickness and trial.
Happy those who endure in peace, by you, Most High, they will be crowned.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death, from whose embrace no mortal can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those She finds doing your will!
The second death can do no harm to them.
Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks,
And serve him with great humility.

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Koran- Chapter 91 The Sun

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful 

By the sun and his midday brightness; by the moon, which rises after him; by the day, which reveals his splendour; by the night which veils him!

By the heaven and Him that built it; by the earth and Him that spread it; by the soul and Him that moulded it and inspired it with knowledge of sin and piety: blessed shall be the man who has kept it pure, and ruined he that has corrupted it! 

  

"Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!" Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) He spoke too soon.

 

The Way of the Dodo

As we manage to pollute rivers, burn forests, divert rivers, poison soil and encroach into habitats, we are killing off the last of many species of animal. Evolution, natural selection, cosmic accidents and natural earth forces have impacted on every  life form on this planet. However not since the great Asteroid impact some 65 million years ago has this planet seen more destruction than by the accelerating impact of man in recent times.

ENDANGERED GREAT ANIMALS OF OUR WORLD

African Elephant Asian Elephant -Indian, Ceylon, Sumatran, and Malaysian Right Whale Blue Whale Fin Whale Golden Lion Tamarin Hybrid Spider Monkey Aye-aye - Madagascar. Gorilla Red Wolf Amur Leopard - eastern Asia. Anatolian Leopard - Turkey. Asiatic Cheetah - Iran. Florida Cougar - United States. Iberian Lynx - Portugal and Spain. Snow Leopard - eastern Asia Texas Ocelot - Mexico, United States. Tiger Marine Otter - South America. Giant Panda Lesser Panda - southern Asia. Cuvier's Gazelle - Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Western Giant Eland - western Africa. Wild Bactrian Camel

Manipur Brow-Antlered Deer - India. Black Rhinoceros Broom's Pygmy-possum - Australia. Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat -Australia. Short-tailed Chinchilla - South America. Giant Armadillo - South America. Crested Shelduck - eastern Asia. White-winged Duck - southern Asia. Marquesan Kingfisher Rufous-lored Kingfisher California Condor - United States. Mauritius Kestrel Hawaiian Crow Cochabamba Mountain-finch Gouldian Finch Blue-bellied Parrot Whooping Crane – Canada, United States. Siberian Sturgeon Alabama Sturgeon Chinese Paddlefish Alabama Shad Silver Shark Clanwilliam Redfin Wild Common Carp

The total surface of the earth is - 196,950,000 square miles with 70% water

Pacific Ocean ------------------------ 70,634,000 Atlantic Ocean ----------------------- 41,322,000 Indian Ocean ------------------------- 28,000,000 Antarctic Ocean ----------------------- 5,610,000 Artic Ocean ----------------------- ------ 5,400,000

Asia --------------------------------  ------- 17,000,000 Africa -----------------------------  - ------ 11,000,000 North America ----------------- --  ----- 9,326,000 South America -------------------------- 6,800,000 Europe --------------------------------  ---- 3,750,000 Australia and Pacific Islands -- --3 ,465,000 Polar Regions ----------------------- ------ 253,000

El Nino - (El Nee-nyo) is the warming of water in the Pacific Ocean.

La Nina - (Lah Nee-Nyah) is the cooling of water in the Pacific Ocean.

Fertilising and resuscitating desolate landscapes through unbound sexuality with no common essence.

Save energy and share your warmth.

Naked Earth Colours.
Terra Viva - vernissage :: Claire Jean