Mario from Super Mario Land 2 final by Dan

Mario from Super Mario Land 2 final by Dan, originally uploaded by danslog.

Street Art in East Village, New York City

Street Art in East Village, New York City, originally uploaded by nickgraywfu.

Nanzen-in Temple Garden

Nanzen-in Temple Garden, originally uploaded by davidteter.

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truthflag

truthflag, originally uploaded by fiatbrat70.

Haiku revisited

Haiku, originally uploaded by Eremita.

A couple of months (or years?) ago i was very interested in Haiku, those japanese mystic short poems. It's not that i didn't read lots of Haiku-related stuff (Bashos "Narrow road" e.g.) but i didn't write haiku till a couple of weeks ago.
Lots of people think that a haiku has 5-7-5 sillables and thats about it. But that isn't true.
Haiku have 5-7-5 _japanese_ sillables, translating them into english, german or [language of your choice] often result kind of different when the 5-7-5 form is used with sillables in the corresponding language. But it is good, for a beginner, to train the 5-7-5 form, so you one day can "feel" if its a haiku or not.
A Haiku also needs a connection to nature, BeOS error messages therefor are not really haiku ;-) (but i still like the idea). Another rule is the kigo, a word that shows at which season the haiku is set. That can be pretty obvious, like "snow" or somehow more subtile, with "long shadows" or something like that. A Haiku should also be authentic, it should capture a real moment outside of you.
But the most important rule (imho, i'm a very, very beginning author) is that a haiku shouldn't be complete as it is written. It should be completed by reading, i.e. not what a haiku says is important but what it doesn't.

Maybe i try writing some haiku in english over the next weeks, lets see :-)

May All Beings be Free of Sorrow

May All Beings be Free of Sorrow, originally uploaded by pradeep jeganathan.

And may they be free of reed, aversion, delusion, ignorance and craving .

Shobogenzo revisited

It must have been more than a year when i started reading Dogen Zenjis Shobogenzo. Here in Germany there is a expensive but great translation available with lots of commentary. The translation is still not finished, the start dating back to 2001. The whole edition ist splitted in 4 books, with number 4 coming this autumn.

Right now i read book 2, and, like book 1, i find it extremely difficult to read. Maybe without lots of practice you can't even realize everything Dogen is talking about, so i hope i can increase my efforts in meditation. But the things you can understand with your monkey mind are also impressive. He uses lots of complex methods to visualize the dharma. Not without reason this masterpiece may be the most important book of soto zen and buddhism itself.

There is also a free english translation available at the Soto Zen Text Project, but it is far from complete.