Facets of a Diamond – Blog

It’s not what you photograph,
nor how,
only who you are doing it.

Not the what,
nor the how
– only the why.

The who
determines the why.

To help heal a sufferer, for him to find his Soul, is to help him to then become a healer helping other sufferers to find theirs.

In a sense, in the same way, helping to heal the camera helps it – us – to heal.

When we were idle, I didn’t have to hold my F3 – but I loved to. The digital, however, I need to, because, like all patients, it is very sensitive. And I love to hold it, for that is healing, my vocation.

Then my Nikon digital becomes a grateful patient. It thanks me and helps me

All healing, whatever the particular modality employed, has two phases.

First, Inspiration: the Spirit, chi, entering down into the healer. The passive phase as the subject is viewed. And then the active phase: Aspiration. The Spirit returning to Whence as the shutter is pressed.

The healer as photographer, and the photographer

Through my consulting room window I can see the two personages I often consult when in difficulty.

One is a large tree which seems to have grown so much since we occupied the house. As if it is responding to our energy as we respond to its.

The other is a suspended garden seat. Whenever I look

For a psychiatrist to put a child on Ritalin is an indication of his incompetence.

What incompetence? He can’t see the little one’s Soul – because he can’t his own.

Something very strange happened to me today.

I was in the middle of meditating when I suddenly realized I’d meditated about two hours previously – and had completely forgotten.

I wonder Who concluded I needed to repeat it.

A haiku is triggered by a sudden perception: a frog jumping, a child playing, a sparrow in the nose of a Buddha statue.

My photographs, too, are initiated by a sudden new vision. So, in a sense, they also are haikus.

The non-believer daren’t believe
until he Knows his mother’s love.

He sits all alone 
in freezing rain for us all, 
this great stone Buddha. 
— Issa
(trans. Sam Hamill)* 

Through the rain,
this tree my Buddha.

* The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku: Kobayashi Issa (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997), p. 111.