you can go to a pitch black room full of darkness and light a little candle, and instantly that darkness flees, but u can’t do the opposite… you can’t go to a well lit room full of light and truth and take any amount of darkness and have any effect whatsoever… No amount of darkness can extinguish the light of one small candle… that’s why Darkness has no truth in it… there’s color in Darkness…

This Tree reminds me of the tree in “The Fountain” movie which had a great impact on me…

When there is no desire,
all things are at peace…

Calmness in victory. Tranquility in defeat. Serenity when confronted by the inevitability of suffering. The sage does not rely on externals to provide him with spiritual strength, for he knows: dependence on external factors – such as status, wealth, popularity, hedonism, success, knowledge and relationships – is the reason why modern man crumples so easily in the face of defeat, failure or loss.

The sage is indifferent to success or failure. He understands that life driven by self-centered ambition will never make sense, no matter how successful you are or with how many positive externals you care to adorn it.

Life itself acquires meaning only when you satisfy your spiritual needs by living in total harmony with the Tao.

Divided… but United Inside…

Maybe those who are Like me…
are all hiding in places Like me…
and that’s why I can’t find those who are Like me…

we are differnet
but we are the same,

we are two…
but we are one,

we are far
but we have the same Roots…

———

I love this Tree… and I feel indebted to it… It has taught many things to me…

It shows and says everything that there is and will ever be…
This tree might has been cut into and divided into two because of a strong lightning… and it’s really fascinating to see that above the ground what seems to the observer at the 1st sight, are just two different tree bodies… but in fact they are one and the same Tree… sharing the same roots beneath the ground… even though they may look like two separate trees… they have and depend on the same root system…

Something that humans have long forgotten… and have searched every ways of creating Schisms… instead of just realizing this simple fact that we all depend on each other… and we’re all humans… we all have that beauty in ourselves… anyway… there’s so much to be said regarding this subject… and if I start I have to write pages of words… that what initiates these inclinations and so on…

I never saw a discontented tree.
They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

~John Muir

In the Ancient times everything was beautiful because most of the people were all single-minded and worked honestly. It was as natural in those days for things to be beautiful as it is now-a-days for them to be ugly.

We too, fit as naturally into this beauty around us in the nature as a tree or a mountain. If we can but remain so always, we shall retain the feeling of our own well-being amid all the great workings of the world-system. So much has been said about human life; and scholars have created such an endless labyrinth of theories! And yet in its inmost kernel it is as plain as Nature. All things are equal in simplicity, and nothing is really in confusion, however much it may seem as though it were so. Everything moves surely and inevitably as the sea…

I had many names and ideas for this photo…

• the Dance of Earth & Sky…
  • Dance of the Trees…

but finally with the help of my friend I decided to give it the name of  “the Pray for Rain…” or in turkish; Yağmur Duası…
since the trees seemed to have two hands pointed towards the sky and clouds…

anyway… I like how the trees seem to be posing for this shot… and standing in a big family-photo arrangement…
and I also like the curve that the hill makes with the sky as the horizon line…

I named this shot with the help of my dear friend; TM225… and I really feel like these trees are standing with a great respect towards something that we all feel in ourselves… whatever we call it in any language… God, Allah, Lord, Tao, or anything…

And I think that Invocation of the act of pray should be as the nature is always doing… thanking and celebrating every moment of life and creation… without getting stuck at anywhere at anything… always flowing… always current… always towards something better… simple and pure… accepting and always giving… and beneficial… by all means… just like these Trees… Ostad Nur Ali Elahi says that:

I’m always drawing instruction from the details of everyday life. This world is the place for learning spiritual lessons, if we are able to learn to draw that instruction from it—even from the flight of an insect…

Ostad Elahi

Thanks TM225 who really dived deep into this photo and named it in the best way that could’ve ever be… Thanks Thanks Thanks…