Guizhou rice fields

Rice fields in the Qiandongan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture of southeastern Guizhou, China. An intensity of resource management unrivaled anywhere in the world. Meticulously sculptured. Groomed. Landscape art. [NOTE: Wonderful article (by Amy Tam) about a Dong village in this region can be viewed here].

Suspension Bridge at Ta Bhing

On the road to the Song Thanh Nature Reserve in Quang Nam province, Vietnam (see Song Thanh N.R. and Rattan Workshop), there is a cool suspension bridge at the entrance to Ta Bhing commune.  Although the video clip is really about the bridge, it's hard to ignore the denuded slopes in the background and the color of the water in the river.  

Sekiyama Redux

We start with a profusion of pink flowers (see Sekiyama). And then the flowers fall like snow. Spring offers us this teaching every year.  

"Only the Buddhas and Ancestors realize the blossoming and falling of flowers in the sky, flowers on the ground, realize the blossoming and flowering of the world and so on; only they know that the flowers of the sky, the ground, the world are sutras.

Nirvana and birth and death are just flowers in the sky".

Kuge: Flowers in the Sky, Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye)
Eihei Dogen (1243). 

Silver Blings

The package label off the Kachin longyi that I received as a gift last December (thx, Saw Htun). "Classic Quality Better Than You Think" is pretty fantastic advertising copy. "Always be shine like silver blings", however, has to win a prize for charming inscrutability. I keep reading it over and over like a koan. [NOTE: The longyi is beautiful with simple green lines on a dark blue background].

The Secret Life of Transects

This is what it looks like when you are 2.5 hours walk from a village in a mixed dipterocarp forest of Western Borneo and the transect runs through a recently cleared field, or ladang. The Dayak fellow with the basket on his back in the center of the photo (see Field Assistant) is about 20 m from where we started the plot, i.e. where the two Dayaks are waiting in the foreground - in the shade, and he is getting ready to set a plot stake. I stepped back to take the photo knowing that this plot wouldn't take very long.  Nothing to count or measure here.  Just so you know.

Head of Bodhisattva

I could have gone a lot of different ways given the title of this post. I opted for form over emptiness and, as a result, offer simply an image of the head of a limestone bodhisattva from the Northern Qi dynasty (550-577) in Henan Province, China. My thoughts about what may actually be going on inside the head of a bodhisattva will have to wait until a later date. [NOTE: Statue is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; see Bodhisattvas at Chua Tay Phuong for a look at some other exquisite bodhisattva statues]. 

Tapajós Vignette (from the Archive)

Women were important members of the field crews in the Tapajós project (see Tapajós-Arapiuns).  One afternoon during the inventory work at Nova Vista, I noticed that one of the crew members had given her clipboard to a friend and grabbed something to take home for dinner that evening...

Sekiyama

A cluster of Japanese flowering cherry trees (Prunus serrulata sekiyama) has burst into bloom in front of my office at NYBG. Thousands of pink blossoms.  Truly one of the most opulent floral displays of spring.  And the ground below is already covered with fallen petals (see Eihei Dogen's Genjokoan for context).

View from Mile 7 Basecamp

I took this shot looking down from the bridge toward the river (and the communal bathing spot) during a pre-breakfast, early morning stroll along the Ledo Road in northern Myanmar. We collected a lot of rattans in this beautiful piece of forest (see Hukaung Valley Rattan Survey). [NOTE: The palms visible along the left bank of the river are all rattans (Calamus)].

Saffron Buses

If you look closely inside the twelve buses that go streaming by in this clip from Yangon, you'll notice that they are all filled with saffron-robed Theravadan monks on their way to attend the funeral of a prominent local Sayadaw, or teacher. Several dozen of these buses passed by as we waited in traffic. Encouraging to see that monks are allowed to congregate to some degree now [NOTE: You can pause the video to get a closer look inside the buses].