Nature Galleries

If the following photos can bring you to a more spacious, open-minded, and all-encompassing place, my purpose for sharing them will have been achieved. Glancing at the images may also be used to help quiet and settle the mind before a time of meditation.

The following beautiful words dovetail with the intent of sharing these photos . . .

And if you find that meditation does not come easily in your city room, be inventive and go out into nature. Nature is always an unfailing fountain of inspiration. To calm your mind, go for a walk at dawn in the park or watch the dew on a rose in a garden. Lie on the ground and gaze up into the sky, and let your mind expand into its spaciousness. Let the sky outside awake a sky inside your mind. Stand by a stream and mingle your mind with its rushing, become one with its ceaseless sound. Sit by a waterfall and let its healing laughter purify your spirit. Walk on a beach and take the sea wind full and sweet against your face. Celebrate and use the beauty of moonlight to poise your mind. Sit by a lake or in a garden and, breathing quietly, let your mind fall silent as the moon comes up majestically and slowly in the cloudless night.

Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of a cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a window sill. Be alert for any sign of beauty or grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments to “the news that is always arriving out of silence.” (Rainer Maria Rilke) [Source: Rinpoche, Sogyal (2002). The Tibetan Book of Living And Dying. Edited by Patrick Gaffney and Andrew Harvey. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. (Pages 84-85.)]

All visitors are welcome to download any of the images shared. They have been taken from my personal collection.

Photo Galleries will soon be added.