Walking in a dangerous forest is probably not the best place to find inner peace. Think of the man who found himself chased through the forest by a tiger, his only salvation was to climb down a cliff. He climbed down the cliff, but found that in the valley below there was another tiger waiting to eat him so he thought to bide his time hanging from a sturdy root. Alas, at that point two mice began to gnaw at the root.
It was at this moment the man discovered inner peace, he saw a ripe strawberry and eating it exclaimed he’d never eaten a more delicious food in his life. I think this is a splendid paradox. We plan, we worry, we do everything we can do to find safety and with it happiness and inner peace only to be discover that inner peace when we are shaken out of our quest by something so startling to change our perspective of life.
tween uncertainties
unexpected solutions
illumination
© G.s.k. ‘16
[…] “Paradox is the life of haiku, for in each verse some particular thing is seen, and at the same time, without loss of its individuality and separateness, its distinctive difference from all other things, it is seen as a no-thing, as all things, as an all-thing.” […] (Chèvrefeuille)
[…] “…that one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow. But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.” […] Søren Kierkegaard
black forest
whatever you may say
a morning of snow
© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)
waiting room
a patch of sunlight
wears out the chairs
© Jane Reichhold
reaching for the sun
tulips bursting through the earth –
colorful rainbow
© Chèvrefeuille
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the story itself itself is a paradox and you expressed it so well !
Thanks you Milan … lovely of you to say so.
I second that sentiment – finding myself also between a rock and a hard place 🙂
Great picture too, of those delicate trees.
BTW, the welcome phrase in your comment box may need a bit of reconsidering: -if not offensive- ?? what am I thinking of here. I’ll let it stew and get back to you about why I found it offensive – the vagaries of the English language.
Hi Joanna … you might be correct … when I wrote that this was going to be a different sort of blog but I changed my mind.