Good morning.

Suffering doesn’t disappear from life, it disappears into life.

— Barry Magid, Ordinary Mind Zendo

The central benefit of Zen, in the context of the ordinary ups and downs of life, is not in preventing the minus and promoting the plus but in realising the fundamental reality that is not under the sway of ups and downs.

— Muso Kokushi

nothing
to lose because
nothing is
mine

#Bloomscrolling #Flowers #Blumen #Macro #Photography

It’s all about the dogs.

"True heroism is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."

- Arthur Ashe

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

— Viktor Frankl

Nothing special. Is special.

OK. There’s absolutely nothing special about these two photos other than the fact I really like the colours in them.

One is just a simple shot of reflections in the window of a gelato cafe. The second is a completely out of focus shot that I accidentally took while I was adjusting my settings to take a different photo.

I usually shoot in monochrome but in the last couple of days have been enjoying mucking about with colour…perhaps as an antidote to being in the midst of winter.

I shoot with the Fujifilm XT5 which allows me to use preset recipes.. that is, the camera adjusts the colour, dynamics and other aspects of the image in-house before it is exported. All I have to do is download the photos, add a frame and they’re good to go.

Anyway I have been mucking around and geek-ily, tweaking the recipes and I am quite happy with the colour grading etc. that has somewhat serendipitously (ie expertise = zero) arisen.

And while we’re talking about colours, here is a bonus question for you. When you look up at the sky and it is a beautiful dark blue, or you look at the reds in the above photo, do those colours exist outside your brain?

Do the reds and the blues actually exist in the outside world or are they just an interpretation, a recipe that has been created in-house, from the information that is received into our brain?

And if blues are not really blues and reds are not really reds what the heck is really going on out there?

"Those who are nothing particular are noble people. Don't strive – just be ordinary."

– Linji Yixuan

Daily #Zen #Buddhism #Yixuan #LinjiYixuan

round is the shape of life

#monoku

Coffee catch up.

The practice of less light.

Another emotive post from one of my favourite blogs.

The practice is almost embarrassingly simple. When it gets dark, I do not press the lever. Instead I turn on one lamp.

In my case it is a small floor lamp with a fabric shade that I bought for about four thousand yen, standing beside the chair where I read. It throws a warm pool of light over the chair, the small table beside it, and about a square meter of floor. The rest of the room — the kitchen counter, the far wall, the ceiling I cannot see anymore — goes quiet.

Read the full post: The Single Lamp.

https://anopenground.com/2026/07/09/what-is-this-light/

Poor refereeing aside, this World Cup has been great.

Lots of amazing goals and classic matches, but there have been some god awful penalties!

I’m drawn to Zen for many reasons but perhaps mostly because it has a sense of humour. I mean one of its primary teaching tools, the Koan, is structurally similar to the way jokes work.

Much of so-called spiritual practice is so needlessly serious and earnest.

Zen delights in undermining the lofty and honouring the trivial.

Being something of a Francophile I always had a soft spot for Les Bleus but I can’t help rooting for the underdog – C’mon Morocco!🇲🇦 ⚽️

https://poeticoutlaws.substack.com/p/weve-had-a-hundred-years-of-psychotherapy