This year’s Japanese summer has set new records. It has been very, very hot, but within the last few days the climate has shown some change. Evenings are becoming refreshing again, and the sooth-saying bell-ringing crickets are coming out to reign in an anticipated reprieve to the day’s heat.

I know that when those crickets start singing, some of the loveliest weather is not far off.

But I’m saying all this at the same time as I feel my own personal change coming. Change in habit, routine, thought, and approach to my daily life.

Why now? I’m not sure. Maybe I’ve reached some unforeseen threshold; I just know I cannot continue the same way.

If it was gambling or some other vice, it would be obvious, but the changes I’m talking about are minuscule, like small twitches of action. The collective power of these twitches is great, like ripples in the water. The eventual effect manifests into a wave that can deliver unwanted results.

So, here I am, listening to some harbinger of change…not only seasonal, but also personal. And I can feel so much hope…

Can you hear it, too? Do you feel that sense of hope as well?

ॐ

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Bell-ringing crickets

a sunflower waits quietly on an Edo-period door

I posted a photo with accompanying sound. Here’s the accompanying text.

I was walking…wandering actually. The concert of sound and the scene froze me. It really was overwhelming. The nature there made me feel utterly inconsequential. And in that moment, not of myself, I felt completely free and detached from everything. I forgot the world and found a smile. It seems someone else felt that long before I ever did…or was.

A mysterious place, pt.2

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A mysterious place, pt.1

Meditate on that which is beyond words and symbols. Forsake the demands of the self. By such forsaking you will live serenely.

Sutta Nipata

The Atomic Dome, Hiroshima…the epicenter of the first atomic attack, August 6, 1945

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.

Japanese Proverb