We find it very normal, but somehow, it is a miracle that with the use of a camera, we can capture what we see, freeze it in time, look at it later and show it to others.

A meditative photographer knows not only to capture the physical but the impermanent, invisible moment of the wind caressing the trees, the smell of a forest that just received the rain onto its green foliage, the biting cold of a glacier, the bird songs piercing the sky...

Such a photographer doesn’t think in words but in pictures that awaken wonder, innocence, the stillness of the heart. He tracks the moment with all his senses vividly open, and pushes the shutter button when the scenery he is looking at takes over his senses and heart.
At that moment, he is beyond mind. He is in the centre of impermanence, in the eternal mystery of the Here and Now.

Pictures are silent stories. You need to know how to read the stories! You are exactly in the same place the photographer was when he took the pictures you are about to look at; just you don’t have the camera in your hands! You have only the eyes of your heart to receive and be absorbed by the details, the fragrances, the colours, the spaces, the whispers transpiring in the pictures. Only then will you know the story they have to share with you... Listen, listen to their silent transmission... Listen...

All the photos from Pema's books are from the talented artist Arjun Roodink.