bodhi tree swaying » Photographs

Vortex in the river of life

bodhipaksa — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:25:25 +0000

My publisher asked me to think about images for the cover of my forthcoming book on the six elements — a book about how we can seek happiness in the midst of an impermanent world. This image seems perfect. It has an eddy in it, which is a great illustration about how something can have a form, and yet everything that constitutes the form is forever passing through to somewhere else. Also, the eddy isn’t separate from the river. The mind likes to imagine a demarcation, but it’s impossible to pin down any boundary. That speaks volumes to me about how we see ourselves as separate from the world, and also as unchanging, while actually our nature is the opposites of those things.

And it’s a natural image rather than a studio shot, so it’s perfect for a book about the elements. I wonder what Sounds True will think of it. Maybe they’ll find something even better.

Ladybird visitor

bodhipaksa — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:05:14 +0000

Ladybird, ladybug. Take your pick.

This wasn’t the greatest photo since the ladyinsect was moving almost continuously and the light levels were low.

Golden fall

bodhipaksa — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:21:13 +0000

One of the joys of the fall: backlit maple leaves.

Golden beetle on slate

A recent rainbow

bodhipaksa — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:30:00 +0000

Who doesn’t love rainbows? This is one I snapped a couple of weeks ago when my friend Dassini was over for a visit.

The rainbow can be used to investigate how we impose our divisive concepts on the unbroken world of flow and change. The spectrum of colors in the rainbow is a continuum, and yet we find that the mind skips over the intermediate colors in order to see only red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

But Xenophanes only described three colors, and saw the rainbow as "a cloud that is purple and red and yellow." Aristotle too saw the rainbow as three-colored, but in his case the colors were red, green, and purple, although he admitted that orange could sometimes be seen between red and green [Meteorologica III, 2. 371-372]. The tri-colored rainbow persisted for a long time in Europe, probably because of the correspondences that could be made between the three colors of the rainbow and the Holy Trinity. Milton, for example, described the rainbow as "Conspicuous with three listed [i.e. striped] colours."

Sometimes four colors were described, and these could be correlated with the four elements. Newton originally described only five colors — red, yellow, green, blue and violet — and may have included orange and indigo in order to make a parallel with the musical scale. And there is evidence that when he did later describe the seven-colored rainbow, those colors did not correspond exactly to the modern red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet version we know today.

In fact, the notion of the seven-colored rainbow is vanishing; the idea of indigo being in the rainbow is now often dropped, and so we’re back to the six-colored rainbow (which I suppose could be correlated with the Six Elements). But when I look closely at high-resolution photographs of rainbows I find that I can, with only a little effort to overcome my habitual division of the rainbow into seven colors, convince myself that I can see a dozen or more distinct bands. Perhaps in the future we’ll evolve specific words for those colors and have a decimal or duodecimal rainbow.

A rainbow is a continuity of color rather than separate bands of distinct hues — which is why our cultural conditioning can affect how many colors we see. It’s that underlying unity and continuity that I’d like to highlight, since it seems to point to something very real about our own situation. We too are part of a continuity of phenomena. We are currents in the great cycles of the physical elements. We are woven into the fabric of nature.

Dragonfly wing over peeling paint

bodhipaksa — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:55:39 +0000

Another of the pictures I took yesterday of a dead dragonfly’s wing. Related posts: Dragonfly wings against summer foliage Dragonfly wings over slate Right-wing lobbying firms encouraging hooliganism Related posts:

Golden beetle on slate

bodhipaksa — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 02:46:09 +0000

Related posts: Dragonfly wings over slate Golden fall Is it better for the environment to drink cow’s milk or soy milk? – By Jacob Leibenluft – Slate Magazine Related posts:

Dragonfly wings over slate

bodhipaksa — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 02:37:18 +0000

I like this one too. I cropped it so you can see more of the detail. Related posts: Dragonfly wings against summer foliage Golden beetle on slate Dragonfly wing over peeling paint Related posts:

Dragonfly wings against summer foliage

bodhipaksa — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 02:25:27 +0000

I couldn’t resist playing with the macro function on my camera this evening after finding a dead dragonfly on the back porch. The picture came out rather well, I thought.

Slow children

bodhipaksa — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:29:33 +0000

I love American “slow children” signs. They look like they were last redesigned about 1939.

My 5c worth

bodhipaksa — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:42:59 +0000

Well, it’s an Ethiopian coin, so it’s really my 0.45c worth. Just me playing with the macro function I hadn’t realized my camera had.