Saturday, May 5, 2012 - Caballo Lake State Park, Caballo NM
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Anticipation, Moonrise, Caballo Lake State Park, Caballo NM, May 5, 2012
Biggy
This was the biggy of the year, the annual full moon when the moon is closest to the earth. I took a bunch of pictures of the moon rising over the cliffs east of the Rio Grande here at the park. By moving around, side to side and forward and back, I was able to make this moonrise last and last, a good half hour. With some luck I got a few interesting enough to develop into a series. We shall see.
Night camp
Riverside - Caballo Lake State Park, Caballo NM
- Verizon cell phone and broadband service - fair signal if a bit slow
- Go to Caballo Lake State Park website
- Locate Caballo Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Emptiness
Emptiness shouldn't be thought of as a negative. A lot of people misconstrue that as meaning the opposite of something is nothing. But this is something slightly different. I don't want to get into comparative religious things because that's a complicated topic. But if we were to think about it, the problem of life and death has to do with what comes in between, and what comes in between is an awful lot of suffering. We're not just talking about the pain of suffering, we're talking about suffering. Our common everyday parlance it's called stress. That's a kind of suffering and we die from this. From the standpoint of Zen Buddhism this life isn't some sort of stage mock-up for something else that comes after this. This is what we have. We're right here and we're being in this present moment. What you want to think about when you think about emptiness is a way in which to stay present. Just as, in a way, in a very strange kind of concept, there really is no such thing as time. There's no dress rehersal for anything.
The Artful Mind, Reverend Sohaku Flagg, Rinzai Buddhist priest, in an interview with Nanci Race, Jan/Feb 2003