[Buddha-l] Front Porch, End of Summer

[andy]

On Monday 07 September 2009 16:17:36 JKirkpatrick wrote:
> Into the black hole of Buddha-L,
> some thing.
>
> Joanna
> =========================
>
> Front Porch, End of Summer
>
> The topmost leaves of a sycamore
> looming giantly across the street
> stir gently in the briefest breeze.
> This is the action
> of trees.
> They know no motive -- yet
> they move.
> Sultry air of September, it may rain.
> Will thunder explode
> the silence?
> Will a downpour invade
> the stillness?
> Small birds are seeking food
> at day's decline.
> Birds know they need food.
> The trees do not know
> they need water.

Now this strikes me!  I often ask my students to wonder. . .  OK, I often 
wonder what it is like to be a tree.  Knowing that you will stay where you 
sprout forever.  I think trees do know they need water.   Just not a lot they 
can do about it.   And I think I hear   screams when one of those tree re-
location trucks drives by with the root-ball of a tree in it's talons.  

> So, while all dharmas are
> interdependent,
> Some, like the trees, the thunder, the rain --
> They do not sow....
> They do not reap.
 
Neither do they? The echoes lead me in the wrong direction!  But I like the 
porch, and I miss the Rockies, and September here is just an extension of 
August when we look for hurricanes.  
Metta, 

-- 
James Andy Stroble, PhD
Lecturer in Philosophy
Department of Arts & Humanities
Leeward Community College
University of Hawaii

Adjunct Faculty 
Diplomatic and Military Studies
Hawaii Pacific University 

_________________

"The amount of violence at the disposal of any given country may soon not be a 
reliable indication of the country's strength or a reliable guarantee against 
destruction by a substantially smaller and weaker power."  --Hannah Arendt