Micro and macro perspective for our peace.

Our physical bodies consist of different organs.

Each one works in harmony with the rest. They help each other to balance,

to keep our hearts working and to live.

When we analyze them further, we see that 

so many parts of our body function to help another.

If one part is damaged, other parts will make up for it.

I often speak about "oneness", or say " We are all part of the universe.",

or "We are all the same on the inside". 

Those ideas remain unchanged, and I'm sure they will never change.

It seems to me that our world is losing the balance environmentally. 

Especially when we consider the international situation right now, 

which is going in the opposite direction from world peace.

As a member of this world, I'd like to do something to promote peace.

I wonder what I can do.  Doing some good to other people, 

starting with those who are right in front of me?

It seems like a very small act and would take a long time to change the world,

however, it will at least create positive energy in our world.

I can't help thinking that conflicts create endless negativity.

I started my former blog "steps to the sky" with the purpose of

contributing to world peace myself, even if only a tiny step,

by exchanging some thoughts with other people, not only Japanese, 

but also from other nations.  

Finding similarities to confirm "We are all the same on the inside", 

and also to learn the differences so as to become a better person.

 I think learning differences and being a better person 

is one of the reasons why we came into this world.

Upon reflection, I admit I haven't done enough yet to achieve my objective.

I should write more. So I will keep writing without giving up, 

until I'm able to realize it.:)

*...*...*

By the way, I mentioned about "en 縁" and "musubi 結び " in my previous post.

One of the meanings of "en" is fate, or to be meant to be.  
We use "en" like "これもご縁ですね。kore mo go-en desune."
(We are meant to be met).
While one of the meanings of "musubi" is to tie 
or to bind (holding the meaning "create" or "produce").

Well, so, when You have read this post, "Kore mo go-en desune :)",

I would be very happy if you could leave a comment, 

to create another step towards world peace.  

Thank you very much:)

The sun is always there.

The sun is always present.

It is just the clouds that hide the sun.

The trees have begun to unfold their leaves towards the sun.

So have the flowers.  

The flowers in our tiny garden have just started to unfold their petals 

and are showing us their lovely smiles :)

Our soul, our true self, is like the sun, it seems.

It is shining and smiling deep inside our heart, always and forever.

I remember that whenever I visited Val's former blog,

the photos on her blog appealed to me.

I could sense the sunlight from her photos, 

which was filtered through her eyes, her true self.

Happy belated birthday, Val:)

A new year

A new year, a new beginning,
This is at least how I feel
These new months of january
Are!

I wish you all a beautiful
New beginning:
The continuity of all the good you've had,
The renewal of all that needs to be.

Checking my few favourite blogs, I see
Bloggers picking their favourite word.
I have picked mine: outside!

I've read an enlightening article recently:
OK I knew I was rather an introvert, but well,
It all confirmed it, and even more!
I've been thinking that an introvert
Might need to focus more on things outside of
Himself/herself. I don't know if you'll agree,
But I feel it is healthy to help our weakest
Qualities bloom, so as to achieve this gentle,
Delicate balance. It also happens that
I've decided I'd take my family out more
This year: little outings, little trips,
Nights out, days out, a concert here,
A play there, a movie, a lunch out...

I believe I need a breather this year, my family does too.
We've had lots of good in 2014, we've had losses too.
I believe I need and want to step out of my comfort zone
A little more often. I want the air, the fun, the open space,
The horizon, the happy sounds of happy crowds.

Here's to being outside/stepping outside/going outside more.
Wishing you a year full of beautiful outings, large and small!

Sharing Beauty and Peace

To dear Val and my dear readers,
I apologize you for my long, long absence from this blog and also I would like to express my gratitude to Val for allowing me to keep writing my part here.  As Val mentioned in her post, I created another blog in Japanese in April, although I have not been able to update it yet, due to a family problem.  The main reason I started the Japanese blog is to share the concept of "Beautify and Pacify", FACE TO FACE.

Sharing positive thoughts and viewpoints is valuable, especially in this confusing world.
Having read all of Val's recent posts, I really reaffirm my connections with her.  I found myself nodding my head as I read each post.  Beauty and Peace ARE always here, in an every single thing we do in our everyday life, and it depends on ourselves whether if we find them and enjoy them or not.  I really feel them through taking care of my mother who has been in the hospital.
As Val and Nancy say, every choice we make IS the key to make our world beautiful and peaceful.
I hope to continue to move on to our/my purpose, both on this blog and on my Japanese blog.

*****

Lastly, I would like to share some photos with you from an event called Children's Day (or sometimes Boy's Festival) in Japan, which is held on May 5th.  It was for celebrating boys but now it has become a day to celebrate children in general.  The event has already passed and though my photos are not timely, I did tell you I would talk about it just before I took my long absense, so I'm glad to be able to share these photos here.

On Children's Day, dolls for boys (patterns after warriors and heroes) are set up (abpve photo).
Also, if you come to Japan in May, you will see carp streamers  everywhere, flying in the blue sky.  Carp have the strength to swim up waterfalls. So, from ancient times, parents have prayed for the success of their children in life.  Traditionally, the event was for boys, but towards girls or boys, the thoughts of moms and dads have been the same: Happiness, good health and success... They all come from their deep LOVE!!!

Sachi

Sharing

We came into this world to experience things, to grow! We can grow by interdependence in all things.

Here, I would like to share this video with you, with which I was very much impressed. In this video, she says, "Two of the most valuable things we have are time and the relationships with other people".  

Subconsciously, we want to get other people to listen to us; we want to know we are not alone; once we know that we are not alone, our heart will open wide and we will be able to send our love to others. This sharing board has proved that, I suppose. 

Following is an experience I had with my neighbors last Sunday. It snowed here (one of Tokyo metropolitan regions) on Saturday, all day long until mid-night; we had about 30cm of snow. When it snows this much (even if it is 10cm or less), we have problems in walking, transortation aspects, etc., as we are not familiar with snow.

So next morning(on Sunday), some neighbors gathered and started snow shoveling in front of the houses to avoid ice forming and to prevent slipping and falling. They were shoveling out NOT ONLY in front of THEIR OWN houses, BUT OTHERS. I also participated with them.
I heard one of them say that he wanted to do this shoveling, because he and his family owea lot to the neighbors everyday. His words made me feel warm.

Yes, we are not living alone. We owe a lot to other people in many ways.
Maybe this sense of gratitude creates a beautiful tie between people, and it brings happiness and peace to people and then to the community.

Looking at this from the global perspective(well...universal level), there is nothing we possess in this universe but we share the same boat called Spaceship Earth. So living with this sense of sharing with gratitude will bring our world peace, I think.  When I think of all this, I can't help wishing that people would stop fighting and start sharing this world peacefully.

May 2014 be filled with love and peace!

The year 2014 began in a relaxing mood with fresh air and warm sunshine. I really thank God for having been able to celebrate the new year peacefully.

During the holiday, I went to see the movie "Gravity" with my husband this year. The image of the earth was beautiful. There was a scene in which the heroin drifts in the space alone, and when she tries to get in touch she hears people's voices and a dog barking from the earth (which makes her relax). She asked to have some lovely words as a lullaby. I would feel the same, if I were alone in the space, or say, if I were on my deathbed. The scene made me want to send space some positive energy such as beautiful warm words filled with love or laughing voices, not negative enerygy like angery voice!  

Also the next day, we visited Izu Shimoda. The sea quietly reflected the warm sunshine. 

The sea and the sun reminded me of the movie's image of the earth in space. 

If you could see the world from the universe's eye, you would feel that fighting between nations is absurd; fighting between each people is meaningless.  

The world will become as what you want to see and what you want to wish. We have responsibility to make the world better. So lets desire the world to be filled with love and peace.. 

I wish you all a wonderful 2014; may it be filled with love, light, peace, good health and happiness:)

Making a dried flower wreath

I posted this in my other blog steps to the sky, but I would like to share this here too.

I hope you can enjoy her beautiful photos. Photos are universal language, aren't they?:) 

I have often visited the blog "Nature's 工房 -晶- " since I had happened to find it.

That photos are all beautiful and the wreaths she makes are full of purity, 

tenderness and warmth goes without saying of course,

however, what caught me the most is the owner's strong sense of love for nature

and her warm thoughts of protecting the earth.

Besides, the fact that her favorites (Ms.Venesia and Ms. Rachel Carlson)

are the same as mine is one of the reasons that I have visited her occasionally.

Last Saturday, I participated in her work-shop at Cafe Slow Gallery, 

and learned how to make a dried flower wreath.

I wanted express my love of nature, with a sense of protecting our earth like her,

but oh my! I failed to make a wreath like hers with a sense of clarity.

I'll challenge myself again, maybe using the flowers and leaves from my tiny garden.

Apart from the disappointing result, it was really nice to finally meet her face to face.

In the event space at Cafe Slow, I looked at an exhibition 

through which some young art students expressed their feelings 

after visiting Fukushima following the disaster March.11, 2011.

 I chatted with two of the exhibitors for a while.

One of them told me that he felt some distance among people 

who live far away from Fukushima;

he sensed a different feeling between the people 

who live far away from Fukushima and the people who live in Fukushima.

In his work he expressed the difference by making two life-sized boys;

 one of them has a placard written "No"(to nuclear energy) and the other has "Yes".

Oh, I should have taken some pictures of their works.I'm sorry for the lack of the pictures.

Somehow, it was so encouraging to me to know there are young people

who have visited the field and caught a sense of the need 

to express their feelings for the sake of a better future. 

After all it's each of them and each of us who possess the ability

to change our world into a beautiful and peaceful place.

Zen temple

I think that Val's idea of sharing beauty and peace in this way is great!

So I'm happy to share my peace with you today.

This is one of Zen temples.  I visited it at the end of last month.

There weren't so many people there at that time and I could enjoy the serenity with the sounds of water flowing.  I heard that the water there is taken from melting snow in the mountains surrounding the temple, and it takes so many years to reach there.  Don't you think it's amazing?

Calming my mind there, I thought :  Mu in the Zen world is described as "nothingness" or "emptiness".  But I think that being the state of Mu is getting to the state of mind of "infinity" or "abundance", kind of  embracing or full of acceptance.  It might be said that real love is that state.

It would have been better if I could share the water sounds without music, but instead I used the music on which I have been hooked these days.  The music is a cover version of classic music (Rakhmaninov Symphony No.2 ) by Japanese instruments (Shamisen and Shakuhachi) players, Hide-Hide.

Sharing the beauty

So I've been thinking we could go a step further together, and share the beauty. All the beauties that surround us: the beautiful skyscraper in front of your office, kids laughing at a party, a music playing on the car radio, a long line of birds in the sky, a pot softly simmering on your stove, a page of your favourite magazine, a word said in a funny way by your work mate...What is your beauty today? What is making your heart skip a beat? What is sending warm fuzzy feelings of comfort to your mind and body? What is bringing a smile to your lips?

And more importantly: how about sharing it?

How about using this modest cozy place to rejoice in the beauties we can share?
It always makes us feel better, to see the beauty, and to share.
We all crave for it, I see that. Beauty, peace, connections. We never get enough, do we?

I'll make the first step, of course: in the small video below, I've included two of my favourite spots. The first one is the view I get to see every morning, the second one is a place I often go to with my kids. It is almost a draft, the videos are a little bit shaky (hastily taken with my smartphone). But it doesn't really matter.

What matters is: I love those views, the peace and joy they bring me...I'd like to share them with you.

And I'd love to get to see more joy, peace and comfort, in whatever pictures, videos, poems you'd be willing to link up or post in the comments below.

And I'd love to make a gallery here, of the beauties you'd like to share...like a peace bank we could visit any time we need a little credit :)

How many heartaches?

How many heartaches in their life, I wonder?
Feed and educate them, I can; clean their clothes, encourage them, teach and pamper, I can.
Protect, I can only a little. And as they grow older, spread their wings and fly away, it will only get more difficult, let alone impossible.
And I wonder, how many heartaches? How many falls, blows and injuries, tears and disappointments?
I can do so much in their young lives, and yet, I cannot stop them from being hurt by the insensitive, the manipulative, the gross and the selfish.
It took me ages, as a truly candid and confident individual, ages to realize how some people think and behave along particular lines of interest. How some people can act in the name of love or friendship in order to achieve their goals. How some people can therefore use the good in you and then ditch you, how insensitive and opportunist some of them can be.
I have had a few friends who turned out to be interested in me only for the help or connection or support I could give them. For a long time I gave unconditional affection and faith to people who didn't deserve that. Only to feel the pain of being left alone, only to feel the nastiness generated by jealousy or greed or selfishness. Was I innocent? I slowly recovered from heartless friends and made fewer but better connections. I chose not to close my heart, but surely I became more cautious and less spontaneously trusting.
Now, I've had the opportunity to see the friendly connections my kids make, and how, in their turn, they so genuinely and spontaneously love their friends. And how the love and affection we give sends us over the moon and makes us fragile at the same time.
And I watch...and see the cuteness, the innocence, the beauty. Alas from the grown-ups who try to control their kids' lives, I also see manipulation and opportunism, competition and jealousy. In older kids I sometimes see the seeds of rivalry and aggressiveness.
And I am left with the helpless knowledge that my beautiful children will also come across those heartaches.
Not only any mother, but any woman with motherly feelings will know how it feels. The fear and the anger beginning to groan and moan deep inside, when our sweet beloved little one is faced with darkness. When we see them starting to doubt, hoping in vain, being disappointed, or sometimes worse, being hit or insulted or harassed. Or when we see them ignorant of the manipulation or arrogance around them.
A mother's life is made of these fears too. I want to use my past experiences, good and bad, to become a better person. All those heartaches in a lifetime must mean something. Maybe simply the assurance that worthless people make good people even better. That building a beautiful life for my family and me, means loving every minute of it and acknowledging every minute of it. Including the ones that hurt. Because if you survive them while keeping a good heart, you'll only get stronger and wiser and happier. You'll be a free individual. Because you've got to accept the bad as well as the good, and draw your own conclusions and walk your own path.

Centering myself

I am glad to say that I was lucky enough to have met Val in this blog world.
Reading her previous two posts, I feel that it is getting stronger.
I have the same view as her.  Comparing ourselves with others and feeling bad boesn't achieve anything.
The same can be said of our children; comparing them to other children and pushing them will not accomplish anything.  The important thing is accepting ourselves for what we are or accepting them for what they are and also loving ourselves and loving them. That brings us confidence and peace.  If you accept them, they will accept you.  If you love them, they will love you.

There is something I do regularly these days.  That's "centering myself"; it's like a kind of meditation.
First, I focus on the center of my heart.  Next, I imagine letting my mind empty as much as possible, and imagine filling my center with something that makes me feel happiness, peace and love (such as nature, sunlight, animals, birds, etc.), for about five minutes in the morning.  Then, it's funny, I find myself filled with love, and I can handle anyone or anything, with a smile and without any negative feelings.  If possible, I do this in the afternoon and also before going to bed, focusing on feeling love at the center of my heart.

"Walden; Or, Life in the Woods" by Henry David Thoreau is a book I read when I was young and I loved it.  I would like to share the following quotes from this book, because whenever I read this book, I deeply feel centering myself is important:

Let us spend one day in the same slow way that nature spends it. Let us rise early without hurry or rush.
Let us not get excited over the small things that lie in our way. Let company come, let company go.
Let children cry, let bells ring.  But we will still have our day.

Let us be steady and stable. Let us plant our feet on the hard rock of the earth. Let us not get caught up in the mud and mess of opinion and prejudice and tradition and delusion and appearance, wherever we find it.Whether it is religion or politics or poetry or philosophy, let us find the place we can call reality, where we can simply say, This is.

If you stand in front of a fact, face to face, you will see it shining with the light of the sun.  You will see it shining with the light of the sun.  You will feel it in your heart of hearts, and you will then be happy to end your time on this earth.  Whether in life or in death, what we want is reality.  If we are dying, then let us face that fact.  If we are alive, let us go about our business.

Time is a stream I fish in.  I drink its waters.  As I watch the thin current flow by, I see how shallow it is.  Only never-ending time remains.  I would like to drink deeper.  I would like to be as wise as the day I was born.

My deepest feeling tells me that my mind is a tool for digging into the heart of things.  It digs deep until it gets to the secret center.  I do not wish to use my hands.  My mind is my hands and my feet.  My mind wants to dig its way through these hills.  Gold is to be found there, and Walden is where I will begin my search.

What competition?

Do you sometimes feel it, I wonder? Do you sometimes feel

The competition? The race? The urge? It comes in a sly package,

Wrapped with pretence and excuses, it comes also

With temptation, stress, it is never far.

As a mother, it hurts far more than it did before,

Before being a mum. I've known competition

For my work, my studies, I've known it also

In more personal domains, disguised as rivalry,

Lack of self-confidence, hesitation, fear. But it never

Was a big deal. I sometimes joined in, when I had to,

And that's that. But as a mother, it raises new questions

About my children, myself, and the world.

This world I live in, where cherished creatures make their 

First steps, stumble, and soar and dance again. And I see it,

At school, at riding lessons... whenever kids innocently

Engage in a new activity, learn and have fun, I happen to hear it:

Comparing, pushing up the limits, encouraging the fight, asking

Only for the very best. But is being the best at anything

An aim in itself? Don't get me wrong, I love a healthy competition

Where the adrenaline never wipes out friendship and pure enjoyment.

But I believe the only competition that's worth is the competition

With oneself...

One of my kids is learning how to swim these days, and I see it again,

Those parents pushing, asking their kid to be the first, throwing babies into the race.

But is life a race against others? That is of course not how

I see it myself. I do not care whether my little child will be 

The best of her swimming class, what I do care about is

Whether she enjoys it, whether she learns and makes progress.

I do not want her to focus on what others do or don't do, I love to see her

Participate, improve, be brave and laugh, and that's how every day, like my other kids,

She grows a little more independent, that's how I hope she and I

Remember that we are all different, that all accomplishments are fine and complementary,

That it doesn't take us very far to compare with others or try to be someone else,

Because really, improving and getting better is nothing without true enjoyment,

And the only competition there might be, is taking place within our bodies and minds.

 

Butterfly

Whenever I see butterflies, I remember all the butterfulies 

that spent their whole lives in my tiny garden 

until they fluttered away in to the blue sky.

They had a really big appetite during their caterpillar stage

and it seemed to me that they looked so hard to find places to spend their pupa stage.

One day after a long, long pupa stage, 

they emerged as beautiful butterflies and fluttered away, up into the blue sky.

It was an absolutely amazing scene.

Swallowtail Butterfly Caterpillars　

Swallowtail Butterfly 

Watching and praying

(These are my posts in which I wrote about them.)

Looking at butterflies fluttering in the air,

resting for a moment on flowers,

or consuming nectar from flowers,

I feel a warm, loving affection.

We experience good and bad in our lives, 

and sometimes, it feels both physically and spiritually too tough.

However, one day we come through the hardest times

and eventually, catch the sunshine like those butterflies.

Everything goes round and round.  

We are all connected to each other.

Everything is ONE.

So there is nothing to worry about.

Speaking to flowers

The same flowers as last year are blooming 

at the same place in my tiny garden.

I thought they had died.

So I was delighted when I saw them open their petals and blossom.

It was invisible, but surely there was "life" under the ground.

The flowers are living in "this moment" brightly 

in the warm sunshine,

 swaying in the soft breeze.

*

I had a chance to read an article by the tree doctor, Konami Tsukamoto,

with which I was greatly impressed.

She has poured her love out towards trees and flowers.

She says in the article that she once felt that a tree needing care said to her that

 it didn't want any medical treatment, but wanted to be a part of a natural cycle.

Then she thought it was arrogance to cure the tree.

After that she sincerely went to the tree (dozens of times)

and listened humbly to what she could do for it.

Now the tree bears an abundance of flowers every year in Ashikaga Flower Park.

This Wisteria photo is from Ashikaga Flower Park in Japan. 

 You can read Wisteria Story and see more photos here.

*

 Opening our minds and pouring love, 

 humbly facing it and speaking to it.

It may require a lot of efforts and pain,

but it also teaches us a lot of things

Eventually we recieve ultimate bliss as its response.

  

This may be said for any occasion in our lives, I think:)

"The dandelion has my smile.."

I learn a lot from nature.

Nature shows me everything: 

patience and perseverance, toughness and harshness,

interconnectedness that Val wrote in her post, 

capacity to heal, beautiy and piece..

and wholeness and LOVE.

We have ups and downs in our lives.

But if we truly believe that we are all one, we are wholeness,

whatever may happen, we would be all right;

we would be able to feel peace of mind, I think.

"I have lost my smile,

but don't worry.

The dandelion has it"

"...everything around you is keeping your smile for you.

You don't need to feel isolated. You only have to open yourself

to the support that is all around you, and in you.

Like the friend who saw that her smile was being kept by the dandelion,

you can breathe in awareness, and simle will return."

(from "Peace is Every Step"by Thich Nhat Hanh.)

It is heartening to think that we are all one...

"Peace is every step.

The shining red sun is in my heart.

Each flower smiles with me.

How green, how fresh all that grows.

How cool the wind blows.

Peace is every step."

(also from Peace is Every Step)

We are all children of Mother Nature. 

Maybe we've just come too far away from what we truly are,

and forgotten our innate ability.

Wishing you a beautiful and peaceful day :)

                                                                   Sachi

A Pace of Grace

This is a short post. I'd like to share the book I'm reading now.
The book is A Pace of Grace by Linda Kavelin Popov. I am still about halfway through it, but I have found something related to my previous post, Music of the Mind. In her book, she offers a four-part program which contains ten rules for health. In my previous post, I described ourselves as a piece of music. Well, our bodies are something like instruments that make tunes. And in order to succeed in playing a beautiful tune, maybe our bodies need to be healthy:) When you have time, please take a look at her homepage , in which you can see more about this book. 

To me, it's not easy to put into practice the rules 100%, but when I did some of them, I felt that I could have peace of mind. So..well..I'll keep trying as much as possible from now on:)

Sachi

Music of the Mind

So many things have popped into my mind since I read Val's previous post "Magical encounters" and I was unable to focus on anything.  Today, I would like to write only about the book called Music of the Mind, by Darryl Reanney.

I read this book about five or six years ago.  I don't think I could understand it properly; I just had my own interpretation, but since then, this book has become one of my favorites.  It is about an adventure into consciousness; however, there is essence of music, as the title suggests, with a beautiful sense of poetry throughout the book, which caught my heart.  It is very difficult for me to describe the book briefly, but if you would allow me to tell you  what I personally took from it, I would be happy to share my thoughts:

The structure of our consciousness is like the Universe. So, we are the Universe, so to speak, which is comprised of an energy wave that resonates with everyday events, with people we meet, with books, music, movies, and etc., beyond time and space, repeatedly and timelessly, like the ocean waves.
The more we experience and involve ourselves with others, the more we learn to vibrate beautifully.  The resonance occurs through the experience, and it takes form through our words and behavior.  We choose beautiful words or manners, as if we are playing beautiful music.  We are a piece of music and when we succeed in playing a beautiful tune, the universe shines brightly.

Isn't it intriguing to imagine that we are tunes ourselves?  Even when we are down or in a dark mood, we are still simply piece of music.  The important thing, I think, is to enjoy the music.
Well, my music now is kind of a "water, light, and wind" tune. How about yours?:)
Sachi

Magical encounters

Sachi's last post made me think a lot, about unconditional love, this love we get and feel from our children, our family, our friends when we are lucky to have real ones, but also from Nature. But right now, my mind is turned towards a kind of magic that has always, always rhythmed my days. The magic of music.
This magic has played many, many tricks, eased so many tensions and brightened so many days in my life. I hardly spend a day without music. I am so ecclectic that my musical tastes range from country to classic via rap. There is a music for every moment, every mood. Through hardship and writing, I get carried away by electro music or opera; bluegrass cheers me like nothing else; rock is a regular companion; there's pop rock for cleaning up the house or dancing with the kids, and there is jazz for cozy evenings...and then, there are the magical encounters. A piece of music that suddenly plays to your heart's secret longings; a song that briskly echoes your mind's ramblings; a tune that makes unrealized feelings rush out, and tears flow.
Last week end I was coming back from a place of both love and pain, one of those places we have to go sooner or later, in one way or another. I was driving, and suddenly there was this music on the radio...

Brothers in arms - Dire Straits

I hadn't heard this song for ages, for years actually. And with the notes, another era of my life came back. A real little 'Madeleine de Proust'. The magic transportation to times when I was safely tucked in life between a mother and a father. The magic times when family was still family. This song means a lot to me, it is also so bitter-sweet, so sad, and yet it transpires with some undergound hope, some nostalgic wisdom. The words reminded me of Sachi's beautiful ideal and aims, too. An aim that I myself tend to forget these days. There is I realize too much anger in my life, too much to my own taste anyway. Life brings wrath in unexpected ways, and if we want to keep our existence beautiful and peaceful, we need some regular reminder of how anger can invade our days in mean, tricky, disguised ways. When I stop and think of it, I know perfectly where my anger comes from; but in my daily life it sometimes crawls back under false pretence. It is not a glass broken by mistake or the fact of being late at work that actually makes me enraged, it is this place of love and pain I have to visit regularly.
And with only one song, the lesson is taught again. We 'have just one world, but we live in different ones'. We get so foolish, so often. My own little personal grief makes me live in a world where anger invites herself whereas I should dwell on this unity Sachi has mentioned times in her posts. This togertherness that means we're all now and ultimately on the same boat. We live under the same sun, whether we are ill or healthy, whether all our loved ones are with us or not, whatever the age, the income, the country, the beliefs.
On another trip to this place of love and pain, I heard this song.

Là où je t'emmenerai (The place I will take you to)

Another happy magical encounter. This song is about the pledge a man makes to his beloved. It is a song of love and dedication, of genuine gentleness, a song I sang softly to my babies when they were very little. It is about loving someone, and protecting, and caring. And it reminded me on the way home, to my beloved sweethearts, that love should always come first. Caring before feeling angry; protecting before feeling resentment; moving forward instead of going back; dedication before vindication; peace before sadness. Music sometimes helps me remember that there is peace and beauty within myself, I just have to allow them in my life, my life as it is. We just have to remember that love comes first and must not be overshadowed by pain. Just like there can be war within ourselves, there can be peace, too.

Wishing you a beautiful day of love and peace. Sound a little hippie there? Well, I like the sound of it ;)
Val

Unconditional love

I have been inspired by Val’s devotion to her lovely kids. I have noticed that she is radiant as sunshine when she talks about her kids. We mothers, have these feelings: strong unchangeable love for our children :)

I’ve heard before that real love never increase or decrease, and I remember I felt it’s perfect. Val describes her feeling as “Shining diamonds that I like to polish”, and I think it might be like saying "love", which shines brightly when we give it out. When I think of this, I feel peace of mind.

I also feel this love in nature: trees, plants, flowers, breeze…etc.
In Japan, cherry trees are in full bloom now. Their flowering period is so short, but they always  brighten me up. Let me share some photos here. Love is everywhere, right? :)

The first one is Shidare-zakura and the second one is Somei-yoshino: both are Cherry trees.

Beautify and Pacify

Beauty and peace…
These are things that we already have because of our nature. We simply forget about them. We have made ourselves complicated by comparing ourselves to others, desiring too much both spiritually and materially, and so on.

I would like to invoke Wabi-Sabi and Zen here.
Well, in my understanding so far, in a Wabi-Sabi world, there is beauty in simplicity. Getting rid of having too many things will help us reach this beauty. Also in a Zen world, concentrating deeply inside ourselves and trying to move the ego out of the way will bring us to reach the state of emptiness and nothingness (mushin in Japanese). Reaching this state, we feel PEACE of mind and also LOVE or supreme devotion, which is what we really are.

I have written other blogs and in the blog I wrote about what I had learned or recognized.
I feel those are also some of the keys for beautify and pacify. So let me share them here again.
“In looking at things through my heart’s eyes, I can change even negative things to love. It helps to see the problems behind the negatives and to understand and accept them.” 
“It’s likely that we came into this world to experience both good and bad, to confirm that we are love itself, and to deepen it. Without objects, we can’t see the love.” 
“Nothing is worthless. Like lights and shadows, everything plays a role in making this world beautiful.” “Looking deep inside myself is always important to keep this idea working.”

There is a chance to find the beauty and peace everywhere. Sharing is absolutely food for enlightenment. So when Val offered me to share this space with me, I felt so honored and pleased. At the core, we are all oneness, regardless of any nationality, age, or gender. I am so happy to share and also to learn from both Val and you.

Lastly, let me add something else.
English is my second language and I still have some problems in writing in English, so please forgive me for my writings being unnatural or difficult to understand. Thank you.

Sachi