Got out Sunday night to the Grafton Peace Pagoda, NY.
This was definitely a very peaceful special place and I can't wait to get back. It was very nice to be able to just hang out there with no distractions other than capturing images and watch the Milky Way, Jupiter & Saturn track across the sky. Bonus: Saw about 6-7 meteors and was able to capture 2-3.
A Peace Pagoda is a Buddhist stupa; a monument to inspire peace, designed to provide a focus for people of all races and creeds, and to help unite them in their search for world peace. Most (though not all) peace pagodas built since World War II have been built under the guidance of Nichidatsu Fujii (1885–1985), a Buddhist monk from Japan and founder of the Nipponzan-Myōhōji Buddhist Order. Fujii was greatly inspired by his meeting with Mahatma Gandhi in 1931 and decided to devote his life to promoting non-violence. In 1947, he began constructing Peace Pagodas as shrines to world peace.
“As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
Drawn outside the lines of reason
Push the envelope, watch it bend
Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind
Withering my intuition leaving opportunities behind
Feed my will to feel this moment
Urging me to cross the line
Reaching out to embrace the random
Reaching out to embrace whatever may come
I embrace my desire to
I embrace my desire to
Feel the rhythm, to feel connected
Enough to step aside and weep like a widow
To feel inspired
To fathom the power
To witness the beauty
To bathe in the fountain
To swing on the spiral
To swing on the spiral to
Swing on the spiral
Of our divinity
And still be a human" ~ An excerpt from Lateralus
