Time Glass Challenge – April 13, 2015

barefoot in the park
caressing rain-wet new grass
– green caterpillar

§§§§§§§

larme di luce
raccolte tra foglie
ah – primavera

(tears of light
collected among leaves
ah – Spring)

© G.s.k. ‘15

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Here is our prompt for this week’s Carpe Diem Haiku – Time Glass Challenge: YOUNG LEAVES and the image above. We are to follow the classical haiku rules.

First Blossom – March 23, 2015

first blossoms
snow like blooms fall in the rain
exciting comments

© G.s.k. ‘15

There is a flowering apricot tree in my son’s garden, which is not the tree in this photograph, though they’re not dissimilar.  Yesterday, was rainy and windy, the petals of the tree blew all around his garden.  When h woke up my son looked out the window and shouted: “Oh no!!! It’s snowing!” and was happy to see that he was wrong.

Linked to Carpe Diem’s Time Glass Challenge

Time Glass Challenge – Entwined – March 16, 2015

summer passion
hands and bodies entwined
colouring grey streets –
city inflames  with passion
painted by their ecstasy

© G.s.k. ‘15

Linked to: Carpe Diem Time Glass Challenge

Time Class Challenge – Wu Wei – March 9, 2015

 

beckoning softly
the garden’s invitation
wu wei

© G.s.k. ‘15

Wu Wei 

This is one of the fundamental principles of Taoism and therefore Zen Buddhism which is a mixture of Taoism and Buddhism.  Literally it means non-doing, non-action … or  “the morality of no morality,” “the knowledge of no knowledge,” … of course it’s a paradox as are many of the Taoist principles …  here is an extract from a discussion on wu wei … and I’ll put the link HERE so that if you’re interested you may go and read the whole page.  The subject of wu wei is rather complicated in its simplicity and is very foreign indeed to our ways of organizing our life.  From the gentle art of calligraphy to the art of archery going through the famous tea ceremony … in fact all aspects of Zen art … wu wei is the goal … that is to do without doing … action in inaction:

    “It is significant that one finds the same paradox in other Asian traditions which maintain the nonduality of subject and object. Not surprisingly, it is most common in Chinese Buddhism, where Taoist influence is to be expected. However, that wei-wu-wei is a paradoxical synthesis of nonaction in action is more clearly recognized in Buddhism. Seng Chao maintained in the Chao Lun that action and nonaction are not exclusive: Things in action are at the same time always in nonaction; things in nonaction are always in action. [28] This claim is expounded in the first chapter, “On the Immutability of Things,” but the point is important enough to be repeated in chapter four, “Nirvana is Nameless”: “Through non-action, movement is always quiescent. Through action, everything is acted upon, means that quiescence is always in motion.” [29] One of the earliest Ch’an texts, the Hsin Hsin Ming of the third patriarch Seng-ts’an, states twice that the awakened mind transcends the duality of rest and nonrest, [30] echoing the argument of Nāgārjuna that both motion and rest are incomprehensible and hence unreal (śūnya). [31] Probably the best-known example, definitely not derived from Taoism, is found in a passage from the Bhagavadgītā which explicitly describes action which is yet no action:

He who in action sees inaction and action in inaction — he is wise among men, he is a yogin, and he has accomplished all his work.
Having abandoned attachment to the fruit of works, ever content, without any kind of dependence, he does nothing though he is ever engaged in work. (IV, 18, 20) [32]

The Sanskrit word for action, karman, suggests an interpretation of these verses which sees them as recommending action that does not bring karmic results. In answer to the Buddhist and Yogic emphasis on withdrawal from the world of social obligation, the Gītā claims that action too may lead to Krishna because no karman accrues if an act is performed “without attachment to the fruit of action.” “

This post is linked to Carpe Diem Haiku Kai – Time Glass Challenge

Haiga Festival – 2 – Bamboo – March 2, 2015

beyond the old fence
rotting leaves and undergrowth
rustle bamboo shoots

 © G.s.k. ‘15

Haiga created for Time Glass Challenge . Carpe Diem Haiku Kai

Blue(s) Haiku – February 7, 2015

Credits: City Garden in Blue by Mary Clanahan (digital impressionism)

rhapsody in blue
a city in a harbour
weeping clarinet
bustling fussing traffic
in New York living the blues

blue night tones
dancing prancing swaying
harbour lights

© G.s.k. ‘15

Today’s “Time Clock Challenge” at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai is dedicated to Blue with a fantastic digitally produced impressionistic photo of New York.  My mind went automatically to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, which happens to be one of those tunes that accompanied my childhood and I could  hear that opening clarinet lament as soon as I saw the photograph!

Morning Haiku and Waka – Haiku – January 26, 2015

warm summer vision
drifting on hot breezes
smell of coconuts

fields of cane
worn abandoned house
African vision
sweet breezes caressed my skin
heady smells of green grass

© G.s.k. ‘15

Time Glass Challenge – Carpe Diem Haiku Kai

The second prompt I’m going to write for is about the Japanese New Year kigo – Hoorai … which is a form of vision of paradise.  This was also written in the prompt:

Interestingly, the most ancient of human civilisations, the Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian, did not believe in the existence of either an afterlife or a heaven. In these technically advanced societies, humans were believed doomed to remain forever in the “house of dust” or darkness, which “none who enters ever leaves”. In this house, the inhabitants find that “soil is their sustenance” and “clay their food” where, clad in bird feathers, they see no light but “dwell in darkness”.

With this in mind and remembering the photo of the Time Glass Challenge above I write:

battle field
abandoned house of dust
ravens crow

The second haiku is based on a description of Hōrai from Kwaidan:

isle of horai
without memories of evil
sweet birdsong
souls fly without fear
eternal happiness

© G.s.k. ‘15

Carpe Diem #656 Isle Of The Blessed (Hoorai)  for further reading … here’s a choka I wrote the other day entitled: Charon’s Boat

Time Glass Challenge – Tanka – January 13, 2015

Credits: Dancing Leaves

in the autumn wind
swirling around the garden
red and orange leaves
dark* merry Morris dancers
harbingers of cold winter

G.s.k. ‘15

 Written for Carpe Diem Haiku Kai’s Time Glass Challenge

* Inspired by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels – he invented the Dark Morris Dancers – harbingers of winter inspiring the creation of  real Morris groups such as the Witchmen Morris and Jack Frost Morris.

Time Glass – Haiku – October 14, 2014

This is a particularly difficult prompt for me … not because the subject is difficult … but because one has to write the haiku with-in 12 hours of its publication, and I .. I forget that Monday evening is:

“It’s time for another episode of our “Time Glass” feature in which the goal is to compose and link-up a haiku inspired on a given photo and a prompt within 12 hours. This feature will bring you into that “moment” as short as the sound of a pebble thrown in water, one of the base-rules of haiku.
Of course you are all free to participate or to not participate …
For this episode I have tried to bring our Second Anniversary in this feature by using a photo and prompt extracted from one of our older episodes.

You have to use this photo and the prompt PINE TREE for your inspiration. ”  Carpe Diem Haiku Kai

Mountain Landscape

wind whispered song
pines perfume the evening
– swaying geisha