Small Sermons
Here are three small poems worth mulling over. Would have been more appropriate to post these during lent. I just post them as they are sent to me.
When the mind is attracted
To anything it senses,
You are bound.
Where there is no I,
You are free.
Where there is I,
You are bound.
Consider this.
It is easy.
Embrace nothing,
Turn nothing away.
-Ashtavakra Gita 8:3-4
————————————–
We Who Prayed And Wept
We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyrrany of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.
Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.
— Wendell Berry
————————————
Ashamed of what’s not shameful,
not ashamed of what is,
beings adopting wrong views
go to a bad destination.
Seeing danger where there is none,
and no danger where there is,
beings adopting wrong views,
go to a bad destination.
-Dhammapada, 22, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu