Photography

What could make pure art?  Obviously it cannot be created with notes of music and instruments, nor with paints and brushes, nor with cameras, nor with marble and chisels, since every medium has gross limitations. A medium is not full of life. We can bring it to life, but by itself it does not live.

Photography teaches me
to see the little things,
not the wide river—
too much—much too much—
but the tiny ripples
flowing round the twig.

I learn to love Her
through Her tiny things.

Photograph by John Diamond, M.D.

On the day

“They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.”
—Oscar Wilde

There must be infinite, ever-ascending stages of high Life Energy and many names we could use for The Feeling, for God, for Belovedness. One very high stage in particular I have delineated is that of Beauty—to be able to

The True Photographer worships Light.

For me taking a photograph is a momentary revelation of an instance of the universal unity. The subject and I are one.

The Shin Buddhists talk about the ferryboat that takes one to the Free Land - heaven on earth. With every photograph I take, I ask whether this is a ferryboat: Can it help the viewer reach the Free Land?

We look at a sunset and the spirit is obvious to us. If we look at someone’s shoe, it seems so much harder to find. But is still there. It is just as obvious, if you know how to really Look.

There is a great difference between a flower growing in the garden and a cut flower, however ikebana-displayed, in a vase. They may superficially look the same, but only one has an Inner Flame, is in its own way embracing and exulting life.

I feel it is the same

The Japanese word kensho is used in Zen in the sense of “seeing one’s own true nature,” the Buddha-Nature. Coming to the realization that one is a Buddha, and that all are Buddhas: Buddhas, Buddhas – everywhere!

It is always my hope that a sufferer looking at my painting or photograph will suddenly have this

Whatever you memorialize (a far better word than take) is Spirit in that particular form. The more you Know that, the more will the viewer.

And the very reason for photography is that the viewer will thus become Aware of the Spiritual dimension of life.

Your supposed choice of subject, of framing, of all