The last day of August and the third trimester of my sixtieth year is underway. This picture was taken in a Japanese garden in San Francisco (goodness, but I have done some travelling this year). But the sign tickled me a little. There is no 'the' in the 'stay on path' and being a westerner I read the picture sign to mean, 'please stay on the bamboo path'. I though it just might be a quirk in the way I read signs, but it turned out to be true, that is what I was being asked to do, to 'stay on the bamboo path'. So I looked into it a little and discovered the spiritual lesson of bamboo is embedded in Japanese culture - ten of which I list here:
- Remember: what looks weak is strong
- Bend but don't break
- Be strongly rooted yet flexible
- Slow down your busy mind
- Be always ready
- Find wisdom in emptiness
- Smile, laugh and play
- Commit yourself to growth and renewal
- Express usefulness through simplicity
- Unleash your power to spring back
This comes from this idea - which I don't know a huge amount about but hey, a new month means new things to read and learn and understand:
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| Ichi Go Ichi E Literally, “one time, one meeting”. Every single meeting is unique. |
I am going to try to remember the list for the first 10 days of September and take them one by one - not as some spiritual awakening but as a way of seeing the world and thinking differently. I was never a big S&G fan but sometimes you have to acknowledged a a couple of recently decent songs - and performances - like this flawed and creaky version - being as one who approves of creaky, human performances:
