Calendar May 2016

I was walking along Porth High Street and I noticed two photographs advertising a woman's hairdressing shop. I wanted to photograph these photographs. As I got ready to take my picture a woman walked past and her blonde hair mirrored the images in the shop window so I included her in the frame. Then just as I pressed my shutter release the woman turned and looked at me and her young child looked at me also. When I later studied this image I saw the adverts encouraging us to desire something - looking good - and I noticed that above the woman is a sign for a sale with "50% off."

In our modern world we are bombarded with images and information all designed to make us want something. Our wishes and desires are stimulated continually by the message that we can feel better immediately and overcome our difficulties if only we pick a particular product. Of course, it is only in our mind of duality that we construct differences between satisfied and dissatisfied, beautiful and dowdy, happy and sad. We can become susceptible to the belief that our struggles will rapidly disappear if we chose a particular path but the benefit obtained from these solutions is only transitory for quite soon we begin to desire something else.

in our scissored living
patches appear
for poor darning

It is by the investigation of the character of our struggles; it is by the investigation of the way we each construct our own world of duality that we can come to an appreciation and a realisation of the true nature of mind, which is non-dual and wanting nothing.

"Just practice zazen in a certain posture. Do not think about anything. Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything. Then eventually you will resume your own true nature. That is to say, your own true nature resumes itself."

― Shunryu Suzuki