Category Archives: Art

Harder, better, faster, stronger.

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So special what you have given to me:

Keeping me in company and inspired when I’m without you. These literary splendors that I wanted without even knowing it. Sometimes I think you know more about me than I do. I’m not really ever feeling alone, even when your gone “I was just about to call you” … “I’m reading the books you bought for me,”…

Growing because of it, picking them up, writing, picking them up, writing , but as you know it’s ever so slowly how my learning process works, ever-changing and emotional, but you ground me, I can’t thank you enough. Simply enjoying um…. everything!

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You like to read but wouldn’t admit it so,  I called you on it :P…..Proud of you and always have been so give your self some credit. My oblivious attitude or Inclinclinations to only hear what I want to hear…. a little ashamed knowing now how lucky that I really am, a little spoiled, but in the good ways, the kind that builds up a person stronger, and a relationship stronger.

I like reading to you, poetry, literature and articles, I never really had someone that would “listen” to me and it felt like a curse. We watch documentaries even if they are bootlegged and blurry, just so we can learn and grow; heartbreaking and heartwarming cycle. I think everything is a cycle; like an ocean tide or the sunset. Artistically or. Visually. Sending you my love.

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L.C.

Nina “Yin” Vestergaard

 

 

 

 

My Journey. My Zazen. Studies n Poetry.

Misty rain on Mount Lu
And waves surging in Che-chiang;
When you have not yet been there,
Many regret you surely have;

But once there and homeward you send,
How matter of fact things look!

Misty rain on Mount Lu
And waves surging in Che-chiang….

🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉

Samsara: Birth and Death.

Buddhist scriptures have it, the darkness of the cave itself turns into enlightenment when a torch of spiritual insight burns. Darkness and enlightenment are not two separate things. Is life not as we live it, cut into pieces by recklessly applying the murderous knife of intellectual surgery?

::::::My robe is torn, shreds hanging and blowing in the wind::::::::::

Whatever this is, there is one thing in this connection which we can never afford to lose sight of – that is, the peace of poverty (for peace is only found in poverty) moral ground. Zen is quite emphatic in this mystic flight, comes from fighting the battle of life courageously and undauntingly.

Written by Nina Shade Vestergaard taken from Zen Buddhism organized by D.T. Suzuki and the teachings of ancient zen master Pai-Chang Nieh-P’an.

Peace upon you all.

The Story of Guan Yin. Goddess of Compassion

FB_IMG_1446244222099In Chinese Buddhism, Guan Yin is synonymous with the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, the pinnacle of mercy, compassion, kindness and love.
(Bodhisattva- being of bodhi or enlightenment, one who has earned to leave the world of suffering and is destined to become a Buddha, but has forgone the bliss of nirvana with a vow to save all children of god.
Avalojkitesvara (Sanskrit: अवलोकितेश्वर): The word ‘avalokita’ means “seeing or gazing down” and ‘Êvara’ means “lord” in Sanskrit).

Guan Yin, 观音, or Avalokiteśvara is one of the most popular and well known female goddess in Asia and probably in the world. Guan Yin is the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion in Mahayana Buddhism.

By the Song dynasty, Guan Yin evolved into a female bodhisattva in white robes that we see today. The male Guan Yin continues to be depicted albeit less frequently. The bodhisattva’s gender is unproblematic to devotees as Guan Yin will manifest in any form to reach out or to help suffering beings.

The bodhisatva introduced into China via the Silk Road and initially, Guan Yin was presented in male form. As Buddhism became localized in China, Guan Yin was sinicised and subsequently transformed into Chinese female form.

Many names were used ; Guan Shi Yin, hearer of all sufferings, was a more popular version. When the second Tang Emperor Li Shi Min, ascended the throne, Guan Shi Yin was “renamed” as Guan Yin due to the Chinese custom of avoiding characters similar to an emperor’s name; Shi in this case.

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Guan Yin is also manifested as the multiple or the most common thousand arm Guan Yin, a symbol of her aspiration to reach out to any being in any form to help them.

She appears in the Book of Lie Zi as a Taoist sage, but it is unclear if this refers to the Kuan Yin later venerated as a bodhisattva.

In China, it is said that fishermen used to pray to her to ensure safe voyages. The titles ‘Kuan Yin of the Southern Ocean’ and ‘Kuan Yin (of/on) the Island’ stem from this tradition.

Another story, possibly Taoist in origin, describes Kuan Yin as the daughter of a cruel father who wanted her to marry a wealthy but uncaring man. She begged to be able to enter a temple and become a nun instead. Her father allowed her to work in the temple, but asked the monks to give her very hard chores in order to discourage her.

The monks forced Kuan Yin to work all day and all night, while others slept, in order to finish her work. However, she was such a good person that the animals living around the temple began to help her with her chores. Her father, seeing this, became so frustrated that he attempted to burn down the temple. Kuan Yin put out the fire with her bare hands and suffered no burns. Now struck with fear, her father ordered her to be put to death. After she died she was made into a goddess for all of her kindness and began her journey to heaven. She was about to cross over into heaven when she heard a cry of suffering back on earth. She asked to be sent back and vowed to stay until all suffering had ended.

Lost-Memoirs of hallucinatory delusions and psychosis. – Nina

mistymountains_by_taenaron-d6i3a1pI don’t know when this all began….It’s kind of a blur. Okay, it’s really a blur.

I remember being by the river with junkies. Calling them my friends but not knowing their names. Skater junkies, one of them was homeless and I was his tour guide for the day. They were smoking meth or crack from a lightbulb, I’m not really sure…

I might have been smoking weed because  I know I was euphoricphoric and anxious treading through the hot sun from park to park, malnourished.

Something inside me cracked.

Dynamite in the distance.  They  say It’s supposed to be stolen, kids stealing small dynamite from the railroad companies.

I don’t even know what year it was..

Next thing I remember I was at home.

But I really remember the windows. Night

The upstairs windows reflected evil and translucent, mysterious in nature, watching me; From all angles because in my delirious mind windows had the capability to watch me from different angles but…. someone was showing me exactly what they wanted me to see and I knew it was not real. Like the outside world was just a TV screen, the world I knew was non existent.

The television early the next morning was somewhat of a magic window as well but…Through THIS magic window I see visions dancing and shimmering along the grass. I am young I’m just a kid who’s lost somewhere… I look through the window… a kid like me. Is that me? Under a tree where beautiful poems foretell my future. I see me. Painting and about to embark on my destiny.

This positivity couldn’t last long ….amidst a war…

…. But I hadnt been sleeping. …Amplified sounds, dynamite and gunshots, bangs and chainsaws, screaming echoing throughout this valley… you could say… .slightly distracting me?

Ambushing enemies by jumping directly through the window is something odd I had to do… to enlighten the world….because whispering in my ear, in reality I was whispering to myself but in my mind it was them, they were begging for it.

I know I’mm being watched…. Through other magic windows…I’m scared“I think that this is too unreal but I can’t wake up from this nightmare.

. .I sense a Mass suicide along the musty mountains, especially in the daytime… on my journeys through the neighborhood market and community bus gypsies and fortune tellers can see my darkness they sense it’s truth and they have been long storytellers.

But I am a goddess. God or what have you. Some sort of luminous being… bringing compassion. Flashbacks on my goals to save the world….I call out to them but I’m laughed at and called an imposter by my mother. My own mother

Not only my mother but the media as well. They portrayed me pissing on the tree of life but the truth was far from it.

I was watching anime on a 13 inch TV . A war episode, maybe gundam wing…

Fighter jets and gunships rattle my cottage on the ocean faster than the speed of sound so I jump out the window and they are already gone. The beauty of my delusional ideology literally brought to life in front of my face.

I’ve stopped taking my medication because I still didn’t understand what was going on with me… I spend my time wandering the neighborhood…..

there’s a baby crying. Why crying? What does it mean. Why am I here? I walk in and am threatened and arrested moments after. I had no idea what was going on….

Not before long I am captured down the dusty alley. Taken and stripped naked following multiple injections. Solitary confinement; a prisoner of war in my own eyes to be tortured and experimented on (partial truths) cloned, drugged, raped and interrogated in my mind….

“Why are you so scared?”  The doctors ask. “What are you afraid of….”.

I’m afraid of you. Devils in suits… I thought.

Alone and afraid I hear a piano from the distance. It’s.. so beautiful and I begin to cry. Harder than I’ve ever cried. I was thankful for something so deep. A change. A friend….

I made a friend with the music and a friend with Ali…. for a moment all at ease….

I made my escape after 2 weeks.  But I think I’m getting lost again. It’s easy to get lost in these mountains… the mountains by the ocean….. “it’s not the same any more is it?” Ali asked.

“No” I replied. ” it’s not,”.

Dedicated to Ali.

Rest in Peace.

By Nina Shade Vestergaard