Kalapuya

I am an old dialect of Kalapuya tribes. I respect the spirit energies. I hear with my eyes and see with my ears. I understand your love for the spirit power guardian. I am an ancestor speaking 300 languages from our history. Now only 150 dialects remain.

A hunting gathering people, speaking Pentian, we numbered 3,000 in 1780. We believed in nature spirits, vision quests and guardian spirits. Our shamans, called amp a lak ya taught us how seeking, finding and following one’s spirit or dream power and singing our song was essential in community.

I speak in tongues, in ancient dialects about love. They are dialects of ancestors who lived here for 8,000 years before where you are now. In the forest near the river all animal spirits welcome you with their love. They are manifestations of your being.

I am blessed to welcome you here. You have walked along many paths of love to reach me.

My dirt path is narrow and smooth in places, rocky in others. I am the soil under your feet. I feel your weight, your balance - your weakness and your strength. I hear your heart beating as my ancestors pounded their ceremonial drums. I feel the tremendous surging force of your breath extend into my forest. Wind accepts your breath.

I am everything you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. I am the oak, the fir and pine trees spreading like dreams upon your outer landscape. I am your inner landscape. I see you stand silent in the forest hearing trees nudge each other. “Look,” they say, “someone has returned.”

I love the way you absorb the song of brown body thrush collecting moss for a nest. I am the small brown bird saying hello. I am the sweet-throated song you hear without listening. At night two owls sing their distant song and their music fills your ears with mystery and love.

I am warm spring sun on your face filtered through leaves of time. I am the spider’s web dancing with diamond points of light. I am the rough fragile texture of bark you gently remove before connecting the edge of an axe with wood.

You carry me through my forest. Your flame creates heat of love. I am the taste of pitch on your lips, the odor of forest in your nostrils filling your lungs. It is sweet.

I am the cold rain and wet snow and hot sun, and four seasons. I am yellow, purple, and red, blue, and orange flowers from brown earth.

Language cannot be separated from who you are and where you live.

I say this so you will remember everything in this forest. I took care of this place and now your love has the responsibility with respect and dignity and mindfulness.

fish likes hamburgers

A Siem Reap street juggler balanced a flaming stick on his nose.

Tourists owed and awed.

A traveler spread thirty watercolor pens on a table.

“Here.”

“Can I use them?” said Lukas.

“Yes you may. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Color your dreams.”

Lukas drew two blue dragons and some red slashes.

“The top one is the dragon elephant. This one on the bottom can fly. Between them is a dead fish. They are fighting over it.”

“Why are they fighting?”

“They are hungry dragons.”

Lukas drew another fish outside the battle.

“This fish likes hamburgers.”

 

river

River said please don't push me.
You can't push me. You can try. Everyone fails.

You can't step in the same River twice.

I am from the source.
Consider my source.
High above you in the white clouds obscuring granite peaks. Climb high. Birds sing.
Humans carry their short life on their back.
Women wear love's labor, feeling a child's warmth behind them.
Heartbeats mingle.
Dreaming on their long walk, through jungles, forests, along a river. On River.
Below the surface of appearances.
Crescent yellow moon
Reflects hello dream.
Dance on my surface.
I am a mirror.
Beauty is my mother. 
I am wide deep. I flow forever.
No beginning, no end.
Are your needs being met Mountain asked River.

Hokusai

"At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, trees, birds, fish and insects.

"When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mysteries of life itself.

"At 100 I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before."

zen poem

I asked the boy beneath the pines
He said ” the Master’s gone alone
Herb-picking somewhere on the mount
cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown”

- Chia Tao

Zen quotes