FROM THE GARDEN OF ZEN: January 2021

January 27, 2021

Mt.Fuji: Inamuragasaki cape

The strong north wind has drifted a bank of thick clouds away almost completely.

Far away beyond the azure wavy sea, Mt.Fuji crowned with pure white snow is soaring high into the winter transparent sky like the holy mother mountain which keeps creating all things in the universe.

The white sea waves are restlessly breaking on the shore of Shichirigahama-beach, which makes me perceive the everlasting undulation of life on this blue planet.

Winter seascape: Inamuragasaki cape

High in the boundless blue sky, winter clouds continue to build up from nowhere and then drift and disappear unknowingly in the cold sea wind.

The rotation of the earth and the gravitation of the moon and other planets cause seawater to continue moving eternally. The winds that constantly flow through the atmosphere blow against seawater and create the waves that keep washing the shore ceaselessly.

The seascape of the ocean waving before my eyes makes me awake to the truth that I am standing here in the infinite vastness of the universe.

Winter seascape: Yuigahama-beach

In the pale winter sky above me, as the sun gradually lowers and cold sea wind gets intenser, a cluster of gray stratocumulus clouds, which dominated the sky of Sagami Bay, drift away in the wind, while continuously collapsing their shapes.

Soon they will melt away into thin air before the sun sinks with a deep red glow in the west.

Winter seascape: Yuigahama-beach

When the temperature of the air falls and the amount of water vapor the air can hold decreases, the water vapor transforms into water droplets or ice crystals and makes up the clouds in the sky.

When the air receives high pressure and there is a downward flow or wind, the air moving downward becomes warmer. Because of this temperature rise, the water droplets or ice crystals return into water vapor again and the clouds disappear.

Clouds appear and drift in the sky, change their shapes constantly, scatter and disappear in the wind, and emerge again out of nowhere as if by magic.