The Buddha in the Garden Moves to a New Location

Through the years, the Buddha that is the "logo" for this blog has moved from a three-bedroom Victorian-style house with glorious rose gardens (dozens of bushes) and a sunny cottage garden to a third-floor balcony garden overlooking a meadow where deer visited every night, and from there to a 1921 bungalow near the uptown area of a small Southern town.  Now that Buddha is sitting under my orange-red-green striped umbrella on the back patio pad of my new place, a townhouse ten minutes from downtown Durham.  No matter where he is, the Buddha is comfortable, but he's getting old and the paint is beginning to chip.  I love him even more than when he was new . . .

To celebrate the way this Buddha has enhanced each garden where he (and I) has lived, I've chosen to share a poem by one of the classic masters.  Simple, sweet, and natural.

All sentient beings are essentially Buddhas. 
As with water and ice, there is no ice without water; 
apart from sentient beings, there are no Buddhas. 
Not knowing how close the truth is, 
we seek it far away 
--what a pity! 
Hakuin Ekaku Zenji