Sunday Poem #11 – Buddhist Chronicles
This week’s Sunday Poem is the first in a nine-part narrative series — the Buddhist Chronicles. I’ve long been fascinated by the story of Siddhartha, of his life as a man before he became the Buddha, the Enlightened One.
The poems began with a question: How do each of the people in this (universal) story bear the costs of one man’s search for enlightenment?
That question led to others, and to an exploration of a spiritual question.
To me, the body is soul in its most solidly incarnate form. Yet many religions and spiritual practices regard the body as a cloak for spirit, to be transcended or shed or otherwise separated like chaff from wheat.
What are the costs of a paradigm that separates the material world from its soul or essence?
How do we, as individuals, experience the pain of this separation in our own lives? How does the earth pay the price for this view of less-than-wholeness?
As always, I’d love to hear your comments about your own experiences with this issue. How does it play out in your life?
And yes, it’s Poetry Sunday, so please share your poems! Poetry enriches all of us.
BUDDHIST CHRONICLES
1
Yashodhara and Siddhartha: The Parting
Would you leave me, Siddhartha? This bed,
its crumpled sheets still bear the imprint
of our bodies. Look, I will cut off my hair,
these heavy tresses you love to twine around your wrists;
I will lock my legs around your waist.
I will not let you go.
Will you leave me?
I left my father’s orchards for you,
learned to love these echoing hills
because they are your home.
My only home is you.
I left them all: my mother, who wept at our wedding,
like the Ganges in full flood; my father, brother,
the country of my birth.
I came to you bereft of language;
we spoke in whispers of blood, thunder of flesh
rejoicing. Do you remember? We made love
on the balcony until it broke and we fell,
still entwined, onto the ground below.
And now you tell me you must go?
You say you’ve looked into the entrails
of suffering and cannot rest until you know
how the story ends. Your mind trembled
when you met that unholy trinity:
sickness old age death.
But we are young, Siddhartha,
my belly leaps with new life. Stay.
Stay for your child
if not for me.
Why can you not stay? Does my beauty
unman you? Your mouth flutters like a bird
beneath my fingers and my heart shouts
in my chest and yet, the curve of my lips,
is it the entrance to death’s cave?
Must you go?
……………………………………………………..
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Hiro, this is simply stunning. I didn’t realize until I got to the end that I was holding my breath as I read.
I have always wondered about this too – what happens to the ones left behind, when the Siddhartha character goes off in search of enlightenment? What do they tell themselves about his departure, and what do their lives look like after?
Thank you!
Thanks, Amna! Stay tuned over the next eight Sundays to hear other voices in this story.
And if you get into exploring it yourself, post your writing here–I’d love to read it.
Hiro Boga´s last post … Sunday Poem #11 – Buddhist Chronicles
Thank you for this.
For me, these things are the same: separating the body from the spirit, separating people from each other, and separating our lives from the life of the planet. And for me, all three take me away from my own deepest, truest sources of strength and support. And that is how I came to my spiritual practice, where one of the core pieces of work I do is to refashion those connections in my own life and to nurture them in the spaces and lives I touch.
Sarah, yes–this is the work of re-membering.
Hiro Boga´s last post … Sunday Poem #11 – Buddhist Chronicles
The story of Siddhartha leaving his wife and child has always been somewhat challenging for me. I think of a friend who left his (devastated) wife and young child for another woman — a decade later they are all happier. I think of another who broke contact with everyone in her family because it was the only way she thought she could survive. Maybe a closer parallel is people who ignore their families in the course of becoming global activists or medical researchers. They aren’t acting out of their own desires, just as Siddhartha did not go off in search of his own wellbeing. The story is still charged, people still hurt, but there is a context of a greater good. I look forward to see how you take that on in future poems.
I apologize, dear Hiro, but something is really charged for me in this post & I’d appreciate it if you would help me. I realize your view of body and soul is different than mine as a Buddhist, but are you categorizing this beautiful tradition as one of “less than wholeness” because it differs from your view of body as soul incarnate? I can’t imagine you are suggesting that but your words keep dancing before me.
I can only speak of my own, Buddhist (Vajrayana, Tibetan) tradition, but practices explicitly engage body, speech and mind united. There are physical energy practices that go even beyond the chakras in their subtlty. “How does earth pay the price for this view of less than wholeness?” Environmental awareness is embedded in this tradition with it’s emphasis on benefitting all beings, less attachment to possessions, and it’s many pujas for earth and oceans.
I don’t mean to go on and on but I’m uncertain how I’m misunderstanding you or if you do not know about these aspects of Buddhism. Knowing your heart, I cannot imagine you are dismissing Buddhist tradition (and its’ practitioners) as lacking in wholeness.
I look forward to your kind clarity.
Mahala´s last post … Gratitude | Gary Snyder | Mohawk Prayer
Dearest Mahala, it’s not my intention to characterize any tradition as less-than-whole. Much less Vajrayana Buddhism, which I practiced for many years, which has played a very significant role in my own spiritual life, and which I honor deeply.
To me, the story of Siddhartha is a universal story, one that invites us to explore complex questions about our humanity: How do we understand and engage with our human divinity? With the continuum of our being? With the world around us?
How do we respond to the the call for wholeness when so often our experience is one of tearing apart and fragmentation? How do we respond to organic cycles of dissolving and creating and dissolving again.
All of which are nested in a larger wholeness.
And what happens when we get caught in the story of separation? Which is another universally human story. Found in every culture, every time, every tradition…
There are no villains here, only human beings attempting to reconcile and hold in their hearts the full range of human possibility.
At one end of the continuum of her being, Yashodhara was a heavily pregnant woman, abandoned by her husband. On the other end of that continuum, she is one with everything and everyone in her story–including Siddhartha.
In one sense, this is a particular story about a particular time and place, with particular players living through particular choices and situations. And yet, the truths it contains at its heart are ones we grapple with, thousands of years later.
So, my dear friend, this is not an attack on your beliefs or your beautiful wisdom tradition. It’s an exploration of a universal conundrum, through the lens of this particular story.
The narrative structure I’ve chosen–or that’s chosen me–is one in which each player in this story contributes to an understanding of it through his or her own particular, necessarily limited, evolving point of view.
The story about separation lives in us, just as the story about wholeness does. And it affects every aspect of our lives and our world. To know wholeness, we must understand separation.
It’s helpful to me, to explore it in this way. I trust it will be helpful for others too.
Much love to you,
Hiro
Hiro Boga´s last post … Sunday Poem #11 – Buddhist Chronicles
Dear Hiro,
I knew I could show my confusion to you and have you respond with wisdom and grace. You certainly have offered that. Thank you.
It wasn’t the narrative you’ve chosen or that has chosen you ;) that created my discomfort. More your prefacing words at the start. Still I love the exquisite fullness of your description and look forward to hearing the other voices.
I didn’t know you had been a Vajrayana practitioner. I look forward to opportunities to
hear more of that, as well.
Thank you for your kindness.
Much love,
Mahala
Mahala´s last post … Gratitude | Gary Snyder | Mohawk Prayer
What a beautiful poem, Hiro!
Like Amna, I’m really looking forward to reading more of this, because I, too, have wondered about those who stay behind.
This idea that those left behind pay a price really challenges me in the area of sovereignty. Knowing that others pay a price for my actions is exactly what makes it hard to exercise my sovereignty.
Can’t wait for you to share more of your wisdom on this.
Victoria Brouhard´s last post … Whatever You Decide Is Okay
Victoria, Sovereignty is a quality of your soul. Your soul makes choices from within the field of unity. Your path may diverge from someone else’s, but when you surrender to your soul’s wisdom, the choices you make will flow from love. They won’t impinge on another’s sovereignty, or on the trajectory of their soul.
Your actions may cause pain to someone else. But if your actions emanate from love, from inner truth, from fidelity to your soul, they will in the long run be healing for everyone, including you.
Your responsibility, then, is to develop sensitivity and discernment, to know when you’re acting from resonance with your soul, and when your choices are based in separation. Sovereignty helps with this.
Love to you,
Hiro
Hiro Boga´s last post … Sunday Poem #11 – Buddhist Chronicles
Hiro, I re-read Siddhartha earlier this year and it was a moving, thought-provoking experience. I am not the girl who once sped thru the book because it was required reading. I am the woman who savored the words, and grasped the message, and learned.
Thank you for this poem, and thank you for those to come. Your gift continues to amaze.
– Michele
Michele Woodward´s last post … To Freak Out, Or Not To Freak Out
Hiro, Your poem is so very touching and your writing is beyond exquisite.
Makes me think of the battlefield in the Bhagavat Gita…and Krishna’s words for Arjuna urging him to establish himself in the Self.
With that, all of our actions become selfless and all of our choices become choiceless…there is just the next thing to do.
Acting from this place of deep knowingness is freedom.
Looking forward to next Sunday’s installment and to getting to know you as you weave your words into a luminous cloth.
With love, Amba
Whew. At first this blush this hits very close to home for me…never mind that which I deal with on a professional level, but within my marriage and wondering if it’s universal.
That is that some men believe that their quest for meaning and communion with spirit has to be estranged from the ‘things of women’… marriage, home, children, responsibilities. And women have traditionally carried this burden of blame, or have had to make the sacrifice to let go and stay behind.
I feel heartened, however, by more messages I see that speak of true experience of Oneness coming only through a conscious relationship with an other. Perhaps we are rediscovering our unity once again… body and soul not mutually exclusive.
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Wow, the poem, the questions and responses, and the inquiry into our human search and journey, are all deeply powerful and personal. The unfolding of this story over the next 8 weeks will be profound, I’m sure.
This is personal for now, as I’m only now seeing and realizing how some of my earlier life decisions impacted those close to me. The activist who left others behind, driven by vision and cause, who wasn’t able to see at the time how deeply my absence impacted the lives around me. And now, twenty years later, owning that and seeing it fully for what it is, rather than cloaked behind my youthful idealism.
The owning and seeing clearly feels good and healthy for my soul, and it is also bringing intimacy back into relationships that had grown distant and strained because of my absence.
And I love your response to Victoria about sovereignty:
“Your actions may cause pain to someone else. But if your actions emanate from love, from inner truth, from fidelity to your soul, they will in the long run be healing for everyone, including you.
Your responsibility, then, is to develop sensitivity and discernment, to know when you’re acting from resonance with your soul, and when your choices are based in separation. Sovereignty helps with this.”
Thank you for so beautifully clarifying this.
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