Original Dhamma Poems, composed by forum members

Oh, wow, thank You! :smile:

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Hello @Dhammadasa , wonderful poem.

Just to keep the forum neat and navigable, we already have a thread for original poetry you can use here:

@moderators can we merge these threads. Thanks!

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Done. Thanks Bhante.

@Dhammadasa: magnificent poem. Lovely opening three lines. :pray:

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Adaptions/translations of Well-known Dhamma Poems

Here is my original poem. But I can not only call it original, because I turned to my Buddha-Nature. So I can thank the Dharmakaya for it as well.

There are Three Jewels
And your Love is heavy
With your Meditation so cool
You search for how to be happy

But you learn you’re alone
And you find you don’t want this world
You want to go home
As the Dharma should take you, yes it should

The Buddha is clear
His mind without fear
His admonition is truth
And you know you won’t lose

At the stage or no regression
All of the Dhamma makes a full impression
You thirst for the Buddha’s advice
And when you read His words
You no longer have to think twice
The milk of your mind has become Dhamma curds

Could you be exactly like Siddhartha?
Walking the Buddhist Path for eons of kalpas
Always converting the Bodhisattvas
To the full law of the Dhamma’s
Mystic Gaze into Emptiness
Who are you?
Are you the one that will save me?
Please make your aim so true

You shoot a rock thrown in the air by your friend
With Siddharthas Noble arrow
Showing them the concentration of the Dhamma that you tend
To apply to all things like a this world’s Hero

Enlightenment?
It’s yours
You have just one more step to take
“But it will take innumerable kalpas,” Time says
For you to save all the beings that are sentient
So you follow the Vow of no defilement
A Bodhisattva on the Path to full Enlightenment

What is the last Enlightenment?
When all beings have become like Siddhartha
And there is no longer any karma
When there is no longer a place
For anyone to call the Saha world
Where we are all like the Buddha in Empty Space.

Have you been there?

Om.

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If you really do blow it, just try not to show it.
Then no one will know it. :grimacing:

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Maybe a Deva will know your terrible secret
But even if it’s a regret
You should become renewed by the Dhamma
And end the ways of karma!

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I wrote the following couplet in Tagalog:
Pumili ako magpuri ng mga Buddha
dahil hindi magagawa na bathala.

Meaning:

I choose to praise Buddhas
because it it impossible to become an ishvara.

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Power of the Dhamma

‘Gift of the Dhamma excels all gifts’

But scrolls and scripts
are only shadowy reflections
of the living Dhamma.

Arahants who chanted the protective verse,
transmitted more than the Blessed One’s words,
so healed through the gift of the Dhamma.

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Little Bodhisattva

Can a little bird
on a brink of extinction
save its species and people too?

Yes, if a meditator’s mind
responds with metta-karuna
and such acts with wisdom.

Bhavana is not just meditation,
meditation is only its part
and its goal is not just personal freedom.

True knowledge is not only of oneself,
and right extinction leads to helping all species,
completing one’s journey long ago began.

Like a little bird that can wake the humankind,
we too can help save a few species
before our life is done.

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Gravity
Or Sagacity
Which one takes you down to fall
And the other you meditate that Emptiness is all

Envision the game of regret
And how it is ruthless, even after one’s dead
Ghostly shells linger on in time
For a wrongdoer’s life strays from what’s sublime

But with Sameness in equanimity, the monk faces perfect solitude
Perfectly moral, with a devotional attitude
Towards the Three Jewels
Living the life of renewal

As the Stream races on Selflessly
He asks Himself and knows He’ll live zealously
Deathlessly
And Conscientiously

For the Mystic Law of the Dhamma
For Metta
And that is the Buddhist Way
You should start today.

The Pity of It

The jerry-rigged construction that is self,

imposing edifice of sentience,

like every vessel, is a shape defined

by emptiness within. An emptiness

not food, fame, sex, wealth, drugs can satisfy.

And even Love, the one true good, which shows

how sham’s the glamor of all else — great Love

indeed’s eternal: we ourselves are not.

Its holy moments are but moments still,

and momentary, ours to touch, not hold.

A vague unease forever underlies,

all pleasure, the unspoken poignant sense

that there is nothing we can really keep,

that death will put the deathlessness of Love

itself unto a test of whose result

no one’s as certain as they’d like to be —

the open secret, Emptiness, it casts

a shadow on awareness, transient,

not always noticed, like a crack across

the crystal of existence, hardly seen

unless you really look for it, but still

a flaw that dooms the jewel — a hidden chill,

from which the warmth of an embrace derives

its poignant painful joy. That’s why Love sighs —

it’s dukkha, suffering. And happiness

itself is fragile: sometimes just one word

is quite enough to shatter it.

It slips

the quicker from our grip the more we grasp.

The greatest poets witness that ours is

existence tinged with sorrow. Beauty’s doomed.

Prince Genji’s “Ah!” and Virgil’s tears, the sad

sweet warning of Brangäne wafting down

from Wagner’s castle with orchestral surge,

the ruined gardens and autumnal light

of verses by Verlaine, the farewell looks

of Watteau’s charming last aristocrats . . .

So long! Indeed, so long, this wandering on.

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The Nymph
The Yakini visits the garden today.
She dances and the ancient trees bow to the light in her womb.
The light of all the world.

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Happy Monks
“These monks, heretics! The lay people should despise them!”
Said Lord Mara the ancient, watching them play and laugh.
The bhikkhus paid him no mind, and played an ancient song.
Mindful and perfect.

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I wish for all sexism to perish,
and all genderism too.
I wish not for sexists to perish.

May all unkind and cruel views perish,
leaving pure hearts behind
in those who clung to them once.

May sexism and genderism
evaporate fast, and wither,
as -untended- they must surely do.

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All -isms,
All -ists,
The “I”, “us”, “them”:
Break the rafters holding “you” up
And see … emptiness

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Through the rounds of rebirth I went.
On Venus, the dharma once existed.
In the cold mountains, my community.
“The tulku is reborn” wept the monks.
Enthroned at the young age of 40, only a child in this species.
The bhikkhus laid at my feet, their wish granting gem.
At 309 I am an adult.
I look at my people, who slog through heat.
The cold mountains now hot.
The martians have come and claimed our lands.
Nuclear weapons destroyed theirs.
And revolution ravages ours.

My attendant weeps for our people.
My hearts ache.
We pray to our dharma protector, the boddhisata of love.
Our world has so little time.
Impermanence haunts us.

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Holy Child
Nothing to disturb in the walls of the kingdom.
The divine child plays in his fathers palace.
Great empty halls filled with nothing.
Gardens of decay.

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Prejudice of any kind
Shoots anger at the object
Like the illusion of a fractured whole
The invisible sadness is inside of hate
There is no real enemy
There is only who the Buddha is
That is the only identity
The rest is truly nonexistent
But He leads you to see
Not an imaginary Self
But the True Metta
Who is the Saviour of this World
Greater than that Love, none

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Graduation

To graduate from this Earth school of life
takes more than just see its nature and let go.

There is higher learning with duties to be done,
to help repair this Earth school for others to come.

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