-
White on white
The bathtub in the snow reveals that we are here on a mountain pasture in winter. The cows are in their shed down in the valley. The marmots are hibernating in their holes underground. And the people have closed their summer chalets and have moved to their homes lower down. The virgin blanket of snow…
-
The lonely slipper
or Shiva and Parvati in a courtyard “Shiva is man and Parvati is woman; they are the causes of creation. All men have Shiva as their soul, and all women are Parvati. Shiva has the form of the male sign, the lingam, and the goddess has the form of the female sign, the yoni. The…
-
Floating Baobab
The decisive moment for this picture came only after it was taken. It occurred to me that it could be interesting to turn the photo 90° anti-clockwise, and that’s what you see here. It suddenly becomes intriguing: it looks as if the tree is floating on a perfectly still water surface, creating a crystal clear…
-
The Pachinko temple
During my walks through different neighbourhoods of Kyoto, going from one beautiful temple, garden, or palace to another, I now and then passed buildings like the one in the photo and I’d wonder what kind of place this was and what went on inside. One afternoon I decided to enter a Pachinko parlour as I had…
-
The art of tea
Looking at the photos in each of the last four posts, I highlighted a concept that is central to Zen or – in broader terms – to traditional Japanese culture. With the photo of the display in the Tokonoma I brought the word ‘harmony’ into focus, but ‘respect’, ‘purity’, or ‘tranquillity’ would not have been…
-
Tranquillity
Zen rock gardens are oases of tranquillity. They are not intended as places we set foot in, but places we quietly contemplate from the outside. They are places for meditation, created in the precincts of Zen Buddhist temples. Ryoan-ji, the rock garden in the picture, dates from the end of the 15th century. With its…
-
Purity
“The path is no more than a way out of this floating world – Why not wash off upon entering it the dust of impurity from our heart.” Stone wash basins like the one in the picture, containing crystal clear water, are invariably placed near the entrance of a Japanese tea room. Before participating in…
-
Respect
Respect is an important aspect of Japanese culture. The emperor, ancient traditions, monuments, art, craftsmanship, they all deserve our deepest respect. As does the Japanese garden; this artistic creation of a highly idealized natural environment …. let’s call it paradise. A paradise that has never existed in real nature – the opposite of the garden…
-
Harmony
If we describe the interior space of a traditional Japanese house using the word ‘harmonious’, then we may regard the display in the tokonoma as the height of harmony. The tokonoma is the alcove-like space found in a traditional house, reserved for the exhibition of a work of art, or a work of nature, or…
-
A stick in shallow water
Such a simple picture, but oh so deep! Ever since I saw this stick in the water and took a picture of it, the image has fixed itself on to my mind. What we see here is clear: 1) a stick in the sun, protruding from the water, 2) the refracted continuation of the stick…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
καιρός remembered 