Tag Archives: New Zealand

divine dazzlement

Posted on by

0

I want to introduce you to artist Claire Beynon who lives and works in Dunedin, New Zealand.  Her art work, her poems and her writing never fail to uplift and inspire me.

Her blog is called All Finite Things Reveal Infinitude, from the poem by Theodore Roethke.  Here’s a luminous 43-second sample:

. 

.

All finite things reveal infinitude:

the mountain
with its singular bright shade

like the blue shine
on the freshly frozen snow,

the after-light
upon ice-burdened pines;

odor of basswood
upon a mountain slope,

a scene beloved
of bees; silence of water…

~ Theodore Roethke

Claire’s bog: http://icelines.blogspot.com/

~

shining mind, radiant perfection

Posted on by

5

Dawn over Mt Maunganui, Aotearoa New Zealand

 

This pure mind … shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection.

But most people are not aware of it, and think that mind is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels, and knows.  Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing, they don’t perceive the radiance of the source.  If they could eliminate all conceptual thinking, this source would appear, like the sun rising …

– Huang-po

 

Image: Dawn over Mount Maunganui, Bay of Plenty, Aotearoa New Zealand

here is what I am

Posted on by

10

 

tree ferns, open armed
shrouded in thick mistiness rolling in
from the South Pacific

bejeweled spider-web mandala
(bemused spider sheltering under
dripping eaves)

breadcrumbs scattered on glistening deck;
shy thrushes dropping in for breakfast

gleaming flax proudly pointing their ebony flower-laden bracts
skyward; fat Tuis feasting

explosions of agapanthus blue, and white,
on long strong stalks

panels of pieces-in-progress strewn
around the polished Rimu floor

tongues of fire dancing in the little wood stove
keeping the air moisture-free
so paintings can dry

crackle and creak of chimney stack
slow staccato on roof-tile
melting diamonds on window-pane
oboe breathing forth from
magic music box …

what else can I say?
there is nothing that I is not
yet I is nothing and nowhere to be found

 

– miriam louisa

please join me in this embrace

Posted on by

8

Hello beloveds ~

This morning I posted a little thing about “the disappearance of the ‘with’ ” on my echoes from emptiness blog. The context was that she-who-writes had found herself in a very hard place – hobbled and humbled – and forced to face the immediate intimacy of being present WITH now, and this and here. The WITH eventually went awol. An irreversible turn of events which no sane sentient being would invite.

These things have consequences unimaginable to our wee-me imaginations. Without a ‘with’ there is no separation. Zilch. No bunkers to retreat to. No safe haven. No cave with guaranteed fresh air.

And so it came to pass that I happened to be driving down a country road on a sweet summers’ afternoon when a tsunami of grief and tears overwhelmed me to the point that I had to pull over. There was no mental or physical trigger – it was a bolt from the blue. I simply melted into the sensation and took note of the time: 3.00pm.

You may or may not know that in this little country at the bottom of the world a crisis has been playing itself out. Last Friday there was an explosion in a coal mine on the West Coast of the South Island. 29 miners have been trapped in the mine since then and efforts to search for them have been frustrated by volatile conditions within the mine.

This afternoon at 2.45pm a second explosion occurred. It was devastating; no one could have survived its fury. The 29 miners – if still alive at that point – expired. This body here, the one that at that time was driving along a country road in the North Island, the one that now faces the keyboard and outpours her heart to you, this body knew.

That is what happens when the ‘with’ disappears.

Why do I share this? Because I sense that if we could – even a handful of us – shed the ‘with’ that goes with separation, if we could do that, really feel that, then our hearts would be able to embrace and comfort those who tonight agonize with the pain of loss. We’d be able to touch the wives and parents and siblings and lovers and children, the colleagues and mates of these men at a level unattainable by any other means. I know that they would feel it, as I felt the moment when their dearests expired. Please join me.

Thank you

~ ml

this is awesome, this is wondrous

Posted on by

8

A week ago I said goodbye to those tropical skies that smile and shower upon the red earth and the tall gums of Capricornia Australia.  I bade farewell to the cackling Kookaburras, the inquisitive geckos, the huge Huntsman spiders…

I said goodbye and they said – Why do you farewell us, You who create us with a simple glance?  A touch?  A sniff or a taste?  A thought?  Are you leaving your mind behind?

A week ago I said hello to the steely temperate skies that hover low, gusty and wet, over this soft green land, Aotearoa New Zealand.  I said hello to the flowering Kowhai and the Tuis probing deep for nectar.  I said hello to the spindly flax, the Toi Tois and the tall cabbage trees tossing in the wind.

And they said – Welcome to yet another empty canvas within Your ever-creative mind.  Welcome, and thank You for giving us existence, for causing us to appear!  Without Your incandescent mind we remain mere patterns of potential in the womb of Emptiness!

This is awesome, this is wondrous:  the knowingness that wherever One goes, there is always only OneSelf unfolding its display in OneMind.

And there’s more – this knowingness, dear One, wears your name-tag.  But don’t be mistaken – it isn’t yours, or mine.  It’s its own OneSelf.

OneSelf, OneMind:  One – and only One.

~ miriam louisa

.

bombs and birthdays and ashes

Posted on by

9

What on earth do bombs and birthdays and ashes have in common? Well, while my Dad was celebrating his birthday back in 1945 as a soldier in the New Zealand armed forces, the city of Hiroshima was being obliterated. I always wondered what it would be like to have one’s birthday coincide with a horrific historical event such as that, but when I’d ask him about it he would simply reply, “It was the war, dear,” shake his head, and shut down.

Yesterday it came around again: the sixth of August. Hiroshima Day and the anniversary of Dad’s birth back in 1913. And two years exactly since Mum and I, with a few dear friends, walked out onto the Urangan Pier and scattered Dad’s ashes onto the turning tide.

 

Urangan Pier, Hervey Bay, Queensland

 

Dad was a dyed-in-the-wool Kiwi. He always wanted to return to homeland Aotearoa and we were on the verge of making his wish come true when he took off. It wasn’t a sudden death. He was, after all, 95 years old.

We deliberated about how best to get his ashes back across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand. A sailor friend came up with the suggestion that we scatter them onto the turning high tide from the Urangan Pier. This being Queensland, Australia, the next landfall would be New Zealand’s West Coast, his favorite haunt. It was a quiet happy ceremony, topped off with a picnic lunch on the beach.

This year, however, I was alone. No little Mother with her twinkling blue eyes. Her absence still takes constant adjusting to, even though more than a year has passed since she left.

It was a divine day, typical of winter in this part of the world. I bought a parcel of fish and chips – Dad’s fave tucker – and sat on the beach right about where this photo was taken. The chips didn’t need salt. Tears were streaming. And they were both sweet and salty. Fragments of this dream decade arose and floated around in mind, bits of deliciousness, bits of frustratedness and weariness and huge upswellings of love. It was all there, and it was all welcomed and named, and allowed to stream out with the tide.

(And this is what I want to share because I think it is so important, and because it took me so long to understand and accept, and because ignorance of it caused so much suffering: not one feeling or emotion or thought can be separated out from the aware-ing in which it arises. The full embrace of one’s experience is the full embrace of the Lover. It is the intimacy we seek. It melts the mind into the heart.)

Punakaiki, West Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand

 

A few months ago I stood there, on the rocks at Punakaiki on the West Coast of the South Island, and fancied I could hear Dad’s unmistakable cheery whistling rising up from the swirling kelp forests.

– miriam louisa

 

Top image: Urangan Pier –  Neil Paskin © 2007
Punakaiki image – Open Source

we are but shadows!

Posted on by

6

 

I crossed the gleaming sea last week
flew on whispering wings of silver
made soft landing on the Long White Cloud:
homeland Aotearoa.

When I left these shores decades ago
the mountains were mountains
and the rivers were rivers
and I was me.

I return.
And the mountains are mountains
the rivers are rivers
yet – their murmurings are now clear:
“We are but shadows!

The infinite incandescence
that displays our brilliant landscape
is the unlit Light
of your own Being.”

How sweet to find
that the only luggage I needed to bring
has always been on board –
going everywhere I roam
and lighting up every dark, lonely moment,
every quiver of earthly joy.

– miriam louisa