These shoots are of a short snowshoe trip we took with Bill and Dianne last weekend. We went over to the old Tamarack ski hill and toured around the back side of Moscow Mountain and summitted the old ski hill. The snow was great and a good time was had by all.

It hard to get good exposures in a snowy environment, even harder when you are also in clouds. These shoots were saved by post-processing. Better would have been to have the correct exposure compensation dialed in. +1.5 or +2 exposure compensation would have been appropriate. The first image was lomolized to no great effect. I also sort of mucked around with the borders am I’m more happy with the latter shots as apposed to the former ones. The last picture has horizon issues because all the trees in the scene where leaning and inorder to straighten them I had to skew the horizon just a little.

Hope you enjoy these.

Below is a quote from a teisho (talk) give in 1976 about the Zen koan “Mu!”

The Gateless Gate: Case 1

From the Mu point of view, that is, from the Buddha nature point of view, that is, from the Awakened point of view, this world, this universe is the fully blossomed Buddha nature. In other words, everything, tangible or not, visual or not, ugly or beautiful, life and death, is Mu. Why then do we need to say this? Why do we need to realize this? It is simply because we have a one-sided view of reality-the existential view that all things are separate and different-and we think that this view of reality is the whole view.

The beautiful point expressed in this quote reminds me to wonder what views of reality that I’m only seeing one side of. Metaphorically, if I look at a pile of coins, I can only see one side of every coin. This is how I go about my life, I see only one side of everyone I meet, of every event in my life. Sitting in zazen is a chance to work to break this down and allow me to encompass the whole of my experience.

The Digital Zendo has a rich library of writings on Zen. Jaye Morris is the curator of digitalZENDO.com and he writes a blog with daily inspirational messages and other topics.

John over at Zen and Photography has posted 50 images in two series of road paint. Even if you are not into Zen or Photography, you have road paint in your life and you probably haven’t noticed it much. I hope John doesn’t mind that I copied a small, low resolution image of one of his road paint images to intice you to check out his series. Road Paint images in a slideshow format.

Photo by John Greer

As the name reflects, the inspiration came from Zen, and the motivation to find the magic in the ordinary. It is said that when we change the eyes we see with, we change the world we see. This has become apparent to all of us over the last several years. It seems easier with each passing day to see the extraordinary all around us, and to be amazed that we didn’t notice it before. Road paint is one of the most ordinary and mundane sights we all see each day, and it is something that almost all are blind to… John Greer

I have finished Janwillem van de Wetering’s trilogy about his Zen experiences. “The Empty Mirror” (about his experiences in Japan) and “A Glimpse of Nothingness” (about his experiences in the US) were both great. In the former book, I could identify with his struggles and it was fascinating to read about the monastic landscape of that time. In the latter book, I really got the message of how important it is to “do my best”. Jan-sen, as he was called, was given that admonition over and over by his Roshi. This is something I can apply to my life.

Jan-sen’s last book, “After Zen”, was a disappointment. His mood was cynical, bitter and defeated. He focused on the dysfunctional characters he met during his Zen practice. He continues to have great doubt but without the desire for the great insight and seems to have forgotten his Roshi telling him to do his best. If he wanted to show that the Zen community is made up of various characters, he didn’t have to do it in such a one-sided way. No doubt, Zen has its fair share of dysfunctional characters.

I hope I’m not too stuck in my own perceptions about the Zen experience. Too stuck in wanting it to be proper that I forget that we are people and people can be weird. Here “weird” is not negative or really judgmental, it just means deviated from the usual. I’m betraying my conventionality. Anyways, this last book is n my opinion too dark and I wouldn’t recommend it.