Zuihitsu

I never know what I will paint:
not a scene, an apple, a circle.
Just what is There
– and unknown until it emerges.

My painting is nembutsu, an invocation, a prayer, to Amida Buddha.

But as Shinran taught, it is not we who pray but Amida who prays through us.

So my painting is Amida painting to Herself.

Brush still in hand, my eyes becoming clear, I find myself laughing at the painting. I’m surprised by my joy.^[1] 

Laughter, Hobbes wrote, “is nothing but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves.”^[2] 

Not in me – but through me.

“A new and shocking valuation of all we have been.” 
— T.S. Eliot

After so many years, the Realization that my mother was, and still is, The Mother. That she is Love. That I live in her Belovingness bestowed.

Whenever I paint, she as Her is always with me, guiding me, loving me. May you, too, have such

All that matters when photographing is the feeling – the Feeling of Belovedness.

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

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.