I love my tractor

After a hard day's work in the fields of Hartselle, Alabama, there's nothing quite like kicking back and enjoying some down time.

因果

遂問、大修行底人、還落因果也無

不落不昧
兩采一賽
不昧不落
千錯萬錯
(無門)

Tell me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?

Not falling, not ignoring:
Two faces of one die.
Not ignoring, not falling:
A thousand errors, a million mistakes.
(Wumen)

* Image: Gaki-zoshi (a portion of the scroll of the hungry ghosts), Kyoto National Museum

The scroll tells one part of the seven-part story of the gaki, or hungry ghosts. The emaciated ghosts, with their skeleton-thin limbs and swollen bellies, are invisible to the human eye. They are in a state of perpetual thirst and lick the drops of spilled water in a temple cemetery.

おいしい

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

りょくちゃ アイスクリーム

Green tea ice cream (ryokucha aisukuri-mu) from Haagen Dazs is here in the US, at least for a time. I found this at my local Harris-Teeter grocery store. I'm speechless.

Cf. my 10 July 2006 entry: http://kugami.blogspot.com/2006/07/green-tea-ice-cream.html

なむ あみだ ぶつ

that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind

-Ikkyu