Silhouettes and Shadows

Bodh Gaya, India

 The Sun never knew how wonderful it was
until it fell on the wall of a building.
Louis Kahn, Architect
quoted in forward of In Praise of Shadows,  Junichiro Tanizaki

Mud Mosque, Mali

Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain,
and see even here, upon a winter’s day,
how beautiful the shadows are.
  Alas!  It is the nature of their kind to be so.
The loveliest things in life are but shadows,
and they come and go, and change and fade away…
- Charles Dickens

Cambodia

Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows,
the light and dark which that thing provides.
- Junichiro Tanizaki

Kabul, Afghanistan

We are but dust and shadow.
- Horace

Preah Khan, Cambodia

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.
- J.R. R. Tolkien

Thailand

Burma/Myanmar

Mauritania

Brazil

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow.
- T. S. Eliot

Italy

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it.  The tree is the real thing.
- Abraham Lincoln

New York

Kandze, Tibet

Burma/Myanmar

Kabul, Afghanistan

China

Kashmir

Korea

Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

Ancient Catacombs, Rome, Italy

A shadow on the wall
boughs stirred by the noonday wind
that’s enough earth
and for the eye
enough celestial participation.
- Gottfried Benn
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

A Matter of Faith

 Girl praying at a mosque, Kabul,  Afghanistan

 

 I have seen many manifestations of  faith during my travels over the past three decades.  Some have been spontaneous, some have been part of a liturgy, some have been prescribed rituals, some have been in magnificent buildings, others have been outside under a tree.   Some people’s faith is embedded in the way they live their lives.

 

 

 

Shaolin monks training, Zhengzhou, China

 

“Just as the body cannot exist without blood, so the soul needs the matchless and pure strength of faith.”   Mohandas Gandhi

 

 

Prayers and teaching, Peshawar, Pakistan

 

 

 

 Sikh holiest site, Golden Temple,  Amritsar, India

 

 

 

 

Sri Lanka

 

 

 

Prayer Flags, Lhasa, Tibet

 

 

 

Charlotte, North Carolina

 

 

 Religious Instruction – Jewish child  in Yemen

 

 

 

Srinagar, Kashmir

 

 

 

Brazil

 

 

Camino, Italy

 

 

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.  To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”   

- St. Thomas Aquinas

 

 

India

 

 

Thrissur Pooram, Kerala, India

 

  “Faith is a bird that feels dawn breaking and sings while it is still dark.”

    - Rabindranath Tagore

 

                                                                       

Tibetan Prayer Festival in Bodh Gaya, India

 

 

Pilgrim praying with monks at the Buddhist Academy of Larung Gar, Kham Province, Tibet

 

“What is Faith?  When your good deed pleases you and your evil deed grieves you, you are a believer.”

- Prophet Muhammad

 

Monk at Jokhang temple, Lhasa, Tibet