Wednesday Photo: Spring Sunset over Suffolk . . . and a few words by Okada Torajirō talking about Ralph Waldo Emerson

Taken with a Fuji X-T2 and a Fujifilm XF 35mm F2 R WR lens using Fujifilm’s standard Astia film simulation
Just click on the photo to enlarge

 

I took this photo near Kettlebaston in Suffolk on the 4th May from the car on the way back from a family wedding. This was a part of the country where my wife and I lived for many years before moving to Cambridge and it was a joy to be back there on such a lovely occasion. However, being a Saturday, this meant I was not able to attend my usual Seiza Meditation (Quiet Sitting) session but, just for half-an-hour, I was able to sit quietly on the grass whilst being bathed in the beautiful, warm spring sun and enjoying the considerable blessings of consciously becoming aware of, paying attention to, and being mindful of nature-naturing within and without me. Looking back on this kind of moment it’s impossible, for me anyway, not to call it a kind of Emersonian reverie in which, as he wrote in his famous essay, “Nature”, one “enjoy[s] an original relation to the universe.”

 

And then, a few days later, after having read my piece on the influence Ralph Waldo Emerson had upon Imaoka Shin’ichirō (1881-1988), my Seiza Meditation teacher and friend, Miki Nakura-sensei, sent me the following passage from Kozo Komatsu’s “Okada Torajirō: His Thoughts and Times” (Sogensha Press, 2000). Imaoka-sensei was taught Seiza Mediation by Okada-sensei and this fact, along with my thoughts mentioned above, it seems not inappropriate to let the following words accompany today’s Wednesday Photo.

In his later years, [Okada] Torajirō spoke of Emerson in the Seiza meditation hall as follows:

“Those familiar with Seiza will resonate deeply with Emerson’s writings. Reading his works, you can understand how the mind changes. This, no doubt, was because he was nurtured by nature.”

後年、虎二郎は静坐会場で、エマソンについてつぎのように話しています。 ＜エマソンの書いたものは、静坐をしたものにはよくわかる。あれを読むと心の変わってゆくのがわかる。彼は自然によって育ったからである。＞

“Okada Torajirō: His Thoughts and Times” by Kozo Komatsu (Sogensha Press, 2000)