Some poetry

[Individual]

My body feels stiff,
Like one wrapped up in chains,
Being electrocuted,
Shivering in the cold,
Or convulsing from drug withdrawal,
My arms and neck spasm spontaneously.
It's as if I have to fight
to control my own body.
It's a fight I often lose,
Without even being aware,
Because typically
I have no control
even over my own mind!
It's like two children,
fighting over the same toy!

The "Agent Smith" program
Encounters a glitch:
Unknown exception,
Cannot read\write to memory
I cup my face in my hands,
Grumbling and growling.

Then suddenly it drops,
I laugh and smile,
"How silly this is!
I am so stupid!
I do this consciously
and don't know why!"
It is conscious,
But only happens
when I am physically still
(sleeping and showering).

I feel happy and free.
Was it the joy of victory,
Or was the evil one relieved
to win another battle?
Which child won the toy:
The good child,
who the toy belongs to,
Or the selfish one
that tried to steal it?

Only time will tell.

[Individual]

Not a very good artist, but here's some random scribblings anyway.

That is pretty much the only "art" I do. The kind of stuff a child might make.

[Individual]

A cosmic flower:



Again, not very clever artwork. Just used over-lapping color wheels, which I duplicated many times, giving each one a unique spin, then made them translucent, followed by lots of smudging.

I had initially thought of making an animation. Lots of spinning color wheels

[Individual]

Wisdom is a fire:
Lighting it is spontaneous,
Tending it is diligence.

If the spark is not spontaneous,
It cannot arise as "unconditioned,"
But if the flame is not tended to,
That realization cannot endure.

It's like Nirvana itself has a cause:
Sparked by prajna-paramita,
Which strikes like lightning,
Coming to earth like a falling star.
It is tended to by morality,
A process of gathering merit,
Like bees collecting nectar and pollen
From flowers to make honey.

[Individual]

When I crave things,
They seem delicious,
But do not bring delight.

When I renounce things,
It doesn't bring delight,
But I am never disappointed.

With joyous morality,
Devoid of pride,
My smile is subtle;
I am satisfied.

[Individual]

Congruence is greater than effulgence,
Effulgence is greater than indulgence,
Indulgence is greater than ignorance,
Ignorance is greater than grievance,
Grievance is greater than malevolence;
Emptiness is greater than them all
It could also be called effluence,
That is, freedom from influence.

[Individual]

Emptiness of objects:
The world is like shadows and dust,
Nothing to hold onto,
And nothing worth grasping.

Emptiness of body:
The body is a shell,
a coccoon, a sarcophagus,
a prison for the mind.
Realizing this,
pain is an illusion.

Emptiness of mind:
Consciousness is a ghost,
A computing machine,
An interstate highway;
An ever expanding network
of relational concepts.
Realizing this,
All things are illusory,
Except one thing:
Freedom!

[Individual]

A deva once asked a Mara, "Why do you cause so much trouble?"
The Mara replied, "I do not cause trouble.
I merely bring forth and multiply
the trouble which is already present."

[Individual]

My body is made of lollipops.
I sit on a beach of sand-like sugar,
Along an ocean of chocolate.
Waves of chocolate slap the shore,
And I lick them up -- slurrrp!

Twizzlers form a thousand smiles,
Which wrap around eachother,
In hugs shaped like hearts.
Kisses with wings fly across the sky,
And chirp, snatching gummy worms,
From the warm cocoa-ocean.
It rains skittles.
Lightning sounds like laughter.
I soar alongside crystal mountains
made of rock candy,
Rivers flowing with fruit juice,
Roads paved with candy bars,
Above real gingerbread men,
Living in gingerbread houses,
And gingerbread hotels,
Running gingerbread businesses,
Having ginberbread jobs,
Reading gingerbread newspapers,
Driving gingerbread cars.

The sun is a big glowing gobstopper.
People made of multi-colored taffy giggle and play,
Twisting their bodies in all sorts of shapes and forms,
Uniting, separating, and re-uniting,
Exploding in many colors,
So that gumballs fly everywhere.
From the gumballs, their bodies re-form.
We laugh and laugh and laugh,
With smiles so powerful,
They would rip a human face in half,
From one ear to the other!

What a wonderful world this is!!!
If only it would last!!!
If only returning were easier than it is!!!

[Individual]

Many vines wrap
around my body as I sleep;
They could also be called snakes.

Lack of concentration,
They grow;
Through ordinary concentration,
I endure them;
Through supreme concentration,
I overcome them;
The highest concentration,
They nor I do not even exist!

My mind grows bright,
The sun shines,
I think, "It is Buddhahood!"
Smiling, raising my hands triumphantly high,
Then I trip over my feet,
And fall back down to the ground.

Why must winter and summer chase eachother?

[nirmal]

Emptiness of objects:
The world is like shadows and dust,
Nothing to hold onto,
And nothing worth grasping.

Emptiness of body:
The body is a shell,
a coccoon, a sarcophagus,
a prison for the mind.
Realizing this,
pain is an illusion.

Emptiness of mind:
Consciousness is a ghost,
A computing machine,
An interstate highway;
An ever expanding network
of relational concepts.
Realizing this,
All things are illusory,
Except one thing:
Freedom!

Great writing Individual.Idea very well reflected.I like Buddhist poems. Do keep writing

The mind moves the pen
That cuts through the Jewel
The Jewel reminds man
Through words of Individual.

[Individual]

Great writing Individual.Idea very well reflected.I like Buddhist poems. Do keep writing

The mind moves the pen
That cuts through the Jewel
The Jewel reminds man
Through words of Individual.

Thank you. Your poem is very good too.

Another one...

I am constantly hungry,
Constantly tired,
And constantly worried
that I'm neglecting my life.

But I am not starving or have malnutrition,
I don't have aches and pains from injury or old age,
And I don't have egregious personal problems.

In fact, I am satisfied,
Full of energy,
Bright and intelligent,
Happily living the dharma.

I am alive!

[Individual]

You're typing on a keyboard, but no matter how hard you try, every key you type is wrong; it's all gibberish. You open a book and you can't read any of the letters. You try to scream, but your voice is muted. You think you hear faint voices, but you don't know where they're coming from. The phone rings, but then it's dead. You turn on the television and there's no signal. You walk outside and nobody is around. You walk back inside and inside the bathroom, you look in the mirror and see another person standing behind you. You look behind you, then you look back in the mirror and you are no longer in the mirror either. Suddenly, your whole body is paralyzed. You hear a quiet laughing.

Then you are ripped upwards into the sky with tremendous speed by an unknown force, as if gravity had suddenly been reversed. Within you, you can distinctly feel a dark and scary presence. All the colors and forms of the world swirl around you in a blur, like water in a vortex, and it gets sucked away until there is nothing but endlessly cold darkness. You are alone forever and you can't breathe.

[Ogyen]

As I play
each note
is a moment
of happiness,
and suffering.

a smile and a tear;
A warm home
in a shanty;
Blissful rising
like a steamy geyser,
rainbows the sky,
an endless shadow.
Major follows the Minor,
Minor follows the Major,
Major and Minor are the same,
Only differing
in arrangement.

Life is
Happiness and sorrow,
Both points of view,
following
States of mind,
perceive the sound;
begin and end
But moments
are the same.

your poem touched me. This stood out after reading it.


Ogyen.

[Individual]

your poem touched me. This stood out after reading it.


Ogyen.

I noticed that I missed the word "in", in "rainbows the sky."

Let me know if I miss any words like that or one word seems completely out of place.

My fingers type faster than my brain can find words correctly, so often if I'm only half paying attention to what I'm typing, I'll type one word that's phoenetically similar (ex: office instead or orifice, purple instead of people) even if the words have a very different total amount of letters... Sometimes it's not even phoenetics -- it's just a tangential relation or it's what I'm thinking about at the time, when I'm not paying attention.

[Individual]

It is easy to remove suffering,
By making merit.

It is easy to indulge in pleasure,
After making merit.

It is easy to be mindless,
After making merit.

It is easy to cause suffering,
After being mindless.

It is easy to desire pleasure,
After being mindless.

It is difficult to make merit,
After being mindless.

It is extremely difficult to become mindful,
After being mindless.

It is far beyond extreme difficulty
to practice prajnaparamita
and transcend this ferris wheel.

Why is it called a "ferris wheel"?
Because the top is the coolest part!
The fun grows as you near the top,
Peaks as you reach the top,
And fades as you descend.

It is difficult to end suffering permanently,
Because suffering from one object of impermanence,
Cannot be relieved through replacing it with another object,
Not even the most subtle of objects:
Not even the the thought of a drifting feather,
A barb of that feather,
A barbule of that feather barb,
A molecule of that barbule,
A proton of that molecule,
Or any measurable quantum state,
Or even the thought of the empty space between!

Beyond, beyond, beyond!
Within, within, within!
Embrace the imponderable madness,
Without asking who or what it might be!

[Ogyen]

You're typing on a keyboard, but no matter how hard you try, every key you type is wrong; it's all gibberish. You open a book and you can't read any of the letters. You try to scream, but your voice is muted. You think you hear faint voices, but you don't know where they're coming from. The phone rings, but then it's dead. You turn on the television and there's no signal. You walk outside and nobody is around. You walk back inside and inside the bathroom, you look in the mirror and see another person standing behind you. You look behind you, then you look back in the mirror and you are no longer in the mirror either. Suddenly, your whole body is paralyzed. You hear a quiet laughing.

Then you are ripped upwards into the sky with tremendous speed by an unknown force, as if gravity had suddenly been reversed. Within you, you can distinctly feel a dark and scary presence. All the colors and forms of the world swirl around you in a blur, like water in a vortex, and it gets sucked away until there is nothing but endlessly cold darkness. You are alone forever and you can't breathe.

Isn't that one of the hardest feelings to face ever? The inevitable finality of this breath and the inevitable arising that emerges from my craving for this breath...

Beautiful, I have many times noticed myself staring myself down in a mirror. I have this awkward dual feeling of confidence and indelible insecure ache of uncertainty. It's the tinge of mortality, as I coined the feeling, the tinge of knowing the end in the beginning. So I look in the mirror with a funny uncertain discomfort towards what looks back at me. It is the whole composition, the culmination of what I am now, in all the imperfections and illusions that I chase down like ghosts, only to come away with empty hands, and still a salivating hunger and thirst for truth. I see this complex inexplainable intricacy in the being this second that is so simple it's effortless. Just breathe. It's in and out. So easy. And yet, there is this whole other relative level conditional to the finality of any beginning...

It's always like I've known that I have this body, this face, these hands, but they have always failed to define "me" because I never really bought their seeming. That is, I know they're useful and necessary tools for my experience, but I didn't trust in their impermanent nature. Instead, like my dharma peers, I find myself more focused on the quality of being and BEING here, instead of investing into the reasons and treasons of sensory life... I guess it's hard to explain, you did a far better job than I in the first paragraph. Truly evocative to me, I remember what that was like, all the times it happened.

Ooops, I seemed to have spilled my mental droppings again all over your thread... sawwies.


Ogyen.

[Ogyen]

Not a very good artist, but here's some random scribblings anyway.

That is pretty much the only "art" I do. The kind of stuff a child might make.

Is that a portrait of Dharma Wheel staff? I think I see a resemblance to the far left... is that retro?


D. Ogyen

[retrofuturist]

Which one's that? The one with the gigantic eye?



Metta,
Retro.

[Individual]

You're typing on a keyboard, but no matter how hard you try, every key you type is wrong; it's all gibberish. You open a book and you can't read any of the letters. You try to scream, but your voice is muted. You think you hear faint voices, but you don't know where they're coming from. The phone rings, but then it's dead. You turn on the television and there's no signal. You walk outside and nobody is around. You walk back inside and inside the bathroom, you look in the mirror and see another person standing behind you. You look behind you, then you look back in the mirror and you are no longer in the mirror either. Suddenly, your whole body is paralyzed. You hear a quiet laughing.

Then you are ripped upwards into the sky with tremendous speed by an unknown force, as if gravity had suddenly been reversed. Within you, you can distinctly feel a dark and scary presence. All the colors and forms of the world swirl around you in a blur, like water in a vortex, and it gets sucked away until there is nothing but endlessly cold darkness. You are alone forever and you can't breathe.

Isn't that one of the hardest feelings to face ever? The inevitable finality of this breath and the inevitable arising that emerges from my craving for this breath...

Beautiful, I have many times noticed myself staring myself down in a mirror. I have this awkward dual feeling of confidence and indelible insecure ache of uncertainty. It's the tinge of mortality, as I coined the feeling, the tinge of knowing the end in the beginning. So I look in the mirror with a funny uncertain discomfort towards what looks back at me. It is the whole composition, the culmination of what I am now, in all the imperfections and illusions that I chase down like ghosts, only to come away with empty hands, and still a salivating hunger and thirst for truth. I see this complex inexplainable intricacy in the being this second that is so simple it's effortless. Just breathe. It's in and out. So easy. And yet, there is this whole other relative level conditional to the finality of any beginning...

It's always like I've known that I have this body, this face, these hands, but they have always failed to define "me" because I never really bought their seeming. That is, I know they're useful and necessary tools for my experience, but I didn't trust in their impermanent nature. Instead, like my dharma peers, I find myself more focused on the quality of being and BEING here, instead of investing into the reasons and treasons of sensory life... I guess it's hard to explain, you did a far better job than I in the first paragraph. Truly evocative to me, I remember what that was like, all the times it happened.

Ooops, I seemed to have spilled my mental droppings again all over your thread... sawwies.


Ogyen.

This one wasn't actually a feeling I myself had. I just thought one day, "What if I write prose which includes all the stereotypically scary events from your standard horror film? That would be neat!" I actually wrote it several days ago, but added a bit more to it when I posted it here.

It's interesting to see you sympathize with it, though. I don't sympathize with it, but I certainly could imagine being in that type of situations, sure!

Not a very good artist, but here's some random scribblings anyway.

That is pretty much the only "art" I do. The kind of stuff a child might make.

Is that a portrait of Dharma Wheel staff? I think I see a resemblance to the far left... is that retro?


D. Ogyen

They are devas.