Michael Mathias: (2) Dukkha - The Cause of All Suffering (from The Cosmic Soul and the World Tree)

Under the Bodhi Tree
What did you see
As you laid your head down on mother earth
The cowherds pelted you with stones and mud
How was it that you gave up your princely robes
You gave up your rubies and emeralds
You gave up the silken texture of your wife's caresses
"When I reached to touch the skin of my stomach,
I took hold of my spine instead" you said,
And embraced non-embracing itself
You stripped not only your shrivelling body
But you shuffled your mind of all forms

As leaves fall and rise again to grow from their branches
The being and the non-being
Merged in your light
Opposites became one and not-one

Were you acting as the universal doctor
When you freed us from the megalithic hospitals
With stained-glass windows?
Prescribing medicine for dukkha
To crucify craving, itself.
On the Tree of Suffering?

Then O Noble One
Lying face down in the mud
You discovered divinity in being and non-being
At that moment the wheel of rebirths
Vanished
And all suffering ceased

Under the Bodhi Tree
You gave yourself to
The everything and the nothing
Like the serpent who rose up out of the well
And snatched the plant from Gilgamesh
You sloughed away the skin of returning lives
You entered the SILENCE
Naked and unafraid

O brutal Buddha,
"House-builder, you have now been seen.
You will not build the house again".

Do we have to kill you
In order to find you in ourselves?

Copyright (C) Michael Mathias, Collected Works, 1993-2005

Poetry Chaikhana
Sacred Poetry from Around the World

About Michael Mathias

Poetry Chaikhana Sacred Poetry from Around the World

About Michael Mathias

Poetry Chaikhana
Sacred Poetry from Around the World