SuttaCentral
Asravas
The symptoms of existence, like the signs
that indicate infection, recognized
for what they really are, for a dis-ease,
are treatable. There’s Kama: want;
Bhava : the grim ambition to exist,
to be someone, to fill space with oneself;
Avidya is elective ignorance,
deliberate impugning of known truth;
Drishti is the deranged delight in views,
in being right so others can be wrong.
(Translation from Du Fu 1:1)
A Trip to the Fung-Shen Temple
(near Lwo-Yang, where the Longmen grottoes on either side of the river Yee have been carved with Buddhist shrines)
The journey to this exotic sacred site
is too far for one day’s there-and-back.
You view the carven marvels
then spend the night here too.
The wind along the river between these figured cliffs
whistles soft and steady, like a distant bamboo flute.
Moonlight through the trees
fractures into shine and shade.
Looking up from between these cliffs,
into canyon-bracketed sky,
it’s like peering through a gateway into heaven.
Ranks of constellations crowd the visible sliver
of sky.
I slept out on the hillside,
now my clothing’s soaked and cold from morning mist—
it’s as though I’d drowsed in a cloud.
Trying to sleep, I hear the dawn meditation bell
commanding mankind, declaring deep insight.
Translation of Du Fu 1: 15; his second poem about this temple, which ends with a meditation on transience
Another Trip to the Buddhist Cave Shrines at Long Men
The limestone crags of Long Men,
grey crags honeycombed with grottoes,
rise from the shores of the River Yee.
Over the ages, that river has cut
a ravine between these cliffs. On either side
you see a cross-section of the landscape,
a wide steep stratum of bare rock
below the forested mountain top.
The tree-bordered post-road that passes here
begins at Lwo Yang, the capital city,
some fifteen miles away.
You know the imperial palace is close,
for its splendor extends in the glaring gold
and flashing silver
of these riverside Buddhist shrines.
How many autumns have chilled into winter,
how many springs have lengthened their days
into summer as I’ve traveled past here
over and over again?
The River Yee flows between these temple precipices,
flows far away, flows forever
while I in my travels pause and ponder.
How many times
will I still walk this shore
before I reach life’s furthest
verge, return no more?
Between the tight male breath.
The loose female breath.
The middle Ma ning exists.
Mara lies that only the male breath is supreme, but we remember all may attain cessation.
The ma ning are worthy of renunciation, perfect middleness.
The holy one was beyond all dualities, we leave flowers at his feet.
In the great forests of the dreaming lands.
The ancient temple stirs up dhamma through the realms of existence.
Time and space have forgotten.
The monastery is ancient, today he lives in the garden.
The bhikkhu Paribhavana sits under his legs.
He wears the black robes.
His duty is to care for the dying naga of the polluted lake.
It’s singing is beautiful in the garden grove.
The naga sleeps in his lap, a testament to the love of the dhamma.
Bhikkhu Paribhavana strokes the beings scales, and kisses his head.
No breach of conduct is had, he benefits all beings.
The mother of demons prays by the side of the Bhikkhu.
Paribhavana whispers the griminanda sutta.
He benefits all beings.
The bhikkhu Hamsa stands in the library, beads in his hands. He wears the red robes.
He has spread his body through three times in the dreamlands.
When the three are one, he will attain parinibbana.
Past present and future illusory.
The bhikkhu does not know when the day will come.
The yakkhini’s help sort the books, they love the scent of vanilla.
He is duty bound to teach the children of the spirits and give them knowledge.
He knows much.
The Bhikkhu Chandanimitta wears the blue robes.
He sits in the lotus across from the moonstone of the courtyard.
His mind penetrates to the formless, the ancient ones dance in pleasure near the holy one.
He exists nowhere and everywhere.
He is in the bliss of dhamma.
Mindful.
The Bhikkhu Bajaravana welcomes in the burning ghosts of the void.
He welcomes them, bringing the blind creatures into the eating hall.
They chatter their teeth, they have no eyes and their skin is translucent and pale.
Naked as birth.
They hear perfectly and suffer greatly, their skin burns cold.
Bajaravana is duty bound to protect all beings, today he will feed the hungry.
They whisper of doom and foretell strange things.
They fear water, dreaming it as putrefying puss.
But the Bhikkhu is diligent, he sits them at a long table.
And serves each a bowl of nettle tea.
They wake from the dream, green fairies.
He is diligent in protection.
In the center of the monastery, the ancient one sits on the cushion.
Wearing the yellow robe.
Bhikkhu Pajjasangha, he weaves the tapestry.
A relic from before the split.
On all sides, hundreds of empty cushions.
Empty lion thrones.
They have been split from one into two and many.
The bhikkhus will return to the center hall some day.
Then they will become one and many.
The sun overlaps the moon over the ancient monastery.
They have become two and one.
The dhamma is not lost.
I was quite intrigued by the term, Ma Ning—for those who, like me, had never heard it, this interesting article gave background
very striking imagery. I used to be a great fan of Tanith Lee’s fantasy books, so this kind of mythic imagery is very much my cup of tea!
Having received new black, red or blue robes,
what do they do with the old ones,
not to waste any cloth?
And the yellow robed one,
how does he remove stains,
does he use sunlight or another way?
Hand them down to the next generation of postulants typically.
Sunlight, stain remover, and redying. Thankfully my robes are a darker brown, which helps cover most stains. It was much more difficult as a white-robed anagarika 
Do their robes continue through the ancient and wise reuse cycle
down to the elements they came from?
Or do they bypass straight to the floor,
or, mixed with plastics, end up on rubbish heaps?
37.14-How-robes-are-recycled.-piya.pdf (510.9 KB)
Samvega
Samvega : awe-struck panic, stunning fear,
death-terror, first-hand knowledge that the end
is coming, and whatever the delay
remaining— if you live to eighty three—
it will come, and it still will be too soon,
so much that seems essential will remain
undone. We all will lose the one we love,
we’ll sicken, weaken, fail. You cannot tell
this secret. People know unconsciously
that if they really listened to the truth
they couldn’t keep on living as they like,
haphazardly, sweet stupid lives of plans,
of pleasures and distractions, the belief
things might end well, or that they’ll never end!
To die before full fifty years have passed
is tragic; yet to live on and outlive
your looks, your strength, your friends, your faculties,
is not a vastly more appealing deal.
Live on a hundred years in health, with mind
alert, yet when the final hour comes
it comes too soon and all was not enough.
But live one day with insight, seeing through
the lies of life, desires that promise more
and always yield you less—a single day
of perfect understanding, that might just
suffice.
Your mind , the likeness of a lake
unruffled by the breeze—a mirrory
expanse of placid water that repeats
a cloudless sky, the boundless, luminous
— a mind refreshed by pure immensity.
To breathe, with spine erect, your head above
the flood of this existence, craving stilled.
Your mind arisen like a kite, borne up
upon the warm wind of your mortal breath.
attention’s thread enough to hold it high.
Plankton and fish sick from plastics,
no reeds around for waterbirds to nest and rest.
No real Lotus flowers to grace and nourish the lake,
no frogs on lily pads.
No butterflies flying over
or bees to pollinate the aquatic plant flowers.
Prayers flags flapping in the wind,
shed fibres and feed the fish.
Have the High Court Orders been respected,
or do plastics still swim in like translucent and colourful fish?
Remembering Christmas
I remember a long-gone Christmas,
where sparking snow covered the Spruce and Pine trees,
and where birds sheltered in and sang from their branches.
I remember ice glazed twigs of birches, that sparked and jingled in the wind,
and animal footprints in the soft pure snow,
and clear cool air in the spacious forest silence.
These Christmas gifts were treasures beyond price.
The modern Santa in his sleigh has lost the Sacred way,
like a bird that mistook shop lights for stars to guide its way.
Fascinating paper on cross cultural Buddhist perspective on LGBT folks. As I was born as a physical male with gender dysphoria, then married a woman in a Christian wedding, and later had sex reassignment in Thailand, and stayed married to the same woman, then took refuge. I don’t know where the heck I stand. But I suspect it is all part of the illusion that comes with the conditioned life so
C’est La Vie! And much metta! 
Our consciousness descends from that weird realm,
between existences, the bardo state,
outside of time and space, whose map Lovecraft
imagined, non-Euclidean, bent planes
and stretched out shapes where postulates cannot
apply and madness makes the axioms.
—there karma lours in nightmare shapes of guilt,
remorse takes living forms—if these succeed
in terrorizing the unbodied self,
it falls despairing into luckless birth.
We vortex in the elements towards
our central emptiness, around it forms
a fetus fronting for lonely gap,
the hollow core, of who we really are
which later we’ll disguise with magic tricks
which are a personality. But first
an embryo, we look most like a pink
and living comma: aptly, for it marks
the pause between two incarnations.
Soon
the bones, still flexible and tentative,
are woven with the wax-pale nascent flesh:
translucent, glowing, nearly shapeless shape
(exposed today to our intrusive view,
by endoscopic camera’s flash.) That mere
first curl will soon become small furled world—
our circling self-involvement contemplates
its ourobouric own existence. Next
with outsized head, upon a lengthened stem
it’s like a question mark—expressive of
its own amazing state.
An outline filled
with shadows, sightless eyes in dreadful head
upon a body more suggested than
expressed, it floats there like the almost-ghost
it nearly still is.
Monstrous, silent life,
improbably increasing in the dark,
uncanny, unsunned, mushroom-like, with skull’s
hunched bulk—from this unprepossessing start
evolves a master of the senses five,
that recognizes things, wants this not that,
finds jobs, holds grudges, falls in love, gets drunk—
this self on which the world converges, terse,
(or seems to)—focusing experience
in mobile “heres” and ever-present “nows.”
Conditional Arising: this is how
we come to be causation and the caused,
and that lost cause which is identity,
a tragedy in twelve repeating acts,
begun in ignorance, which always ends
in lamentation, pain, grief and despair—
forgetful death, rebirth, repeating like
an existential stutter, like a tale
a drunk retells to anyone who’ll hear.
And thus we come to be again, achieve
a being that can never be enough.
We are, but craving never really sleeps,
it’s full of schemes as exiled Stuart kings
in restless penury in foreign lands.
Life after futile life, inheritors
of old injustices, our sense of self,
right royal in the scope of its demands,
enslaves the elements to reconstruct
a new identity, to coalesce
a Me, wrap matter ’round the emptiness
we feel, and weave again a living net
to snare fleet being—being of the sort
imparted by our karma, what we did
and didn’t do, the impact of our acts.
Our births and rebirth evermore attest
the terrible momentum of what’s done.
All beings got enlightened
All except for me
‘Come on!’ they said in unison
‘Why don’t you come and see?’
‘Meditate on this Dhamma
Before it gets too late
You too will realize for yourself
And know the Deathless state!’
But I alone was lazy
I alone inept
While everyone else was striving
I alone slept
I turned a deaf ear to the teachings
Thought I had not the merit to start
But now, ‘Don’t miss the moment!’
Is a lesson I have by heart
So I trudge alone through the aeons
An age goes by in a flash
POP! The universe spins out again
And WHUMP! spirals in with a crash
Mine alone are the heavens
The Brahma realms I know too well
Mine alone the mansions
The gardens and the hells
For me, existence is greying slow
Even hell has no bite
The demons have gone, the fire’s dimmed low
And the winter’s lost all its spite
The heavens, too, are not what they were
The palaces drab and unkempt
No divine maidens to tickle my fancy
From ageing there’s nothing exempt
But I can’t bring myself to worry too much
In the end it’s just all right
This languid decline of Creation
Withering into the night
For to realize Nibbāna I’d have to be born
As a human; but that takes two
For me all alone there’s no hope of that
My prognosis is: nothing to do
While all other beings rejoiced in the Deathless
That choice can never be mine
I chose life, so put up with the lifeless
Ever last in time am I
This is a collection of dhamma poems that refer to the possible implications of climate disaster and endangered animals, among other sad thoughts, so please be mindful if you think they will adversely affect you!
Personally I feel much much better when I read bleak things that reflect my own feelings about what’s going on, so I hope this makes the reader feel they’re not alone 
Neither standing nor swimming, I watch the flood:
Illuminated
Not illuminating
I stare at other things now a strange lighthouse:
Conquered
Concrete
Stolen
Static
Still
Not the moon, lamps made from Indium slush bright grey dust:
Yttrium thunder
Terbium green
Now the lightning never sets on the riving seas:
Chromatophores, unseen, might light up at each lash
The algae are done slushing.
65 million years
fifty-year blink-of-an-eye
a SEEL-uh-kanth), a “spookfish!“
a soft tardigrade kiss
then microplastic spike
shallow pond fights at my
thumb smears
If only
We find ourselves seated at a busy festival on a hilltop,
Turned off by false chronicles played glibly on a stage:
Perhaps thirty years until we start the bend down with tech,
But twenty years until we all might start to starve to death.
Though apart
Both saddened beyond words
We might both get up,
Meeting on the brow
Eyes bright torches
Electrosensitive smiles
Autoluminescent leading dimly lit dinosaurs
Less lost than not lost
Palms interlocked
Facing others facing
And slipping towards the crest
We might climb down to prostrate sublime on the muddy ground.
When will the warm flame in my heart
Whet the space just above my eyes?
Maybe I will stay perched here,
Getting colder,
Just like the world.
“Aeroplane or thunder?” my grandfather asked, who once needed to know
As we watched bats fly behind clouds at dusk
I said plane, he said thunder
In time we were both right
Every rainfall a potential bombardment
How glad I am to know that when the rain ends
Happy birds always come out and sing in reverie
A return
When did they arrive?
Were they always here?
Snow falls on the window of the monastery.
Spring will come.
Green plants and cool spring breeze, dappled light in a monastery window.
The nuns are home.
The foolish
In this Saha Loka, sat a consummate busineness man.
“I and I alone will be their god,”
Said Mara Devaputra.
A man wanders in orange robes.
“There are no nuns,”
“There are lesser humans and subhumans.”
“Monks have no business speaking about corruption of power”
“Compassion is foolish, rule by iron and blood is wise”
He lives in the community by theft, even with proper going forth.
He is a son of a consummate business man.
A monk sits under the grove in ocher robes
“There are nuns”
“None are inferior or superior, all subsist on food”
“A monk is a mother to all sentient beings.”
“Monks are bound to speak against what is evil in the world, no matter what.”
“The crown and sword are a curse, compassion alone will tame”
They have earned their place in the lineage.
They are the child of a noble family.
Mara shudders.
Often cut
Unfathomed
And low
With much space to grow
In the mud
Blooming things we know
These Lotus Flowers Awake
Alive
Transpiring Dhamma knowledge
Make you so smart you don’t really need a College!
So thrive!
And hold onto the Three Jewels for Life’s sake.
Make the Dhamma, Buddha, and Sangha your primary Life’s guide!
