I was out on a hike in Harriman State Park not long ago, trying out a new camera (a GE X500), looking for scenic overviews and majestic shots along lakes and mountain tops. It was a sunny spring day, and I found enough grand vistas to keep the shutter busy (well . . . as grand as it gets in lower New York State). However, I also decided to grab a shot of this little rock-side patch of moss, grass, leafy plants and a few tiny flowers amidst the decaying leaves from last autumn. In the middle of a verdant forest, scenes like this don’t immediately grab one’s attention. But they are interesting little “cities” in and of themselves, cities of the local ecology, places where certain conditions and random events come together such that an interdependent knot of different life-forms find a spot to flourish together. Not all that unlike our own human cities, such as Boston, Brussels, Buenos Aires or Bangkok. Each of these human cities has its own distinct flavor, just as this little city of flora in the forest does.

So, keep that in mind the next time you are in the great outdoors. You may be walking past a wonderful and interesting little city with its own life and history and reason for being. Another good reason in life to stop and smell the flora.

I took this shot last week, put the file aside, then opened it up today not remembering where the file had come from. My first impression was “what the heck is all this, some kind of blood cells or bacteria?” But no, it’s just spring-time in New Jersey, a detail shot of a tree in bloom. You can notice something about mother nature; when she wants to get something going, she uses crude devices (who knows how many of these blossoms are going to make it into some kind of fruit, and from there, find some fertile soil where a new tree could take root; it’s a very inexact, hit-or-mostly miss process, no environmental scanning and intelligent targeting behind it). But she takes a lot of shots. And somehow, her world keeps on going.

So far, anyway . . .

A few days ago, I posted some thoughts about the dog-mu Zen koan. Here’s a grungy shot of three real dogs, in their little front-yard triangle off of Market Street in Newark. I started noticing these guys a few months ago, as I pass their humble abode every day on my way home from work.

So, does the dog have Buddha nature? I don’t think that these pooches particularly care about that, on this rainy spring afternoon. All the more reason to suspect that they possibly DO have Buddha nature. As much as any of their human (all too human) bosses might.