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SAMANERI SUDHANNA IS a former attorney who has been living at the Bhavana Society Therevadan Buddhist monastery and retreat center near High View, West Virginia for more than a year. She received her novice ordination as a Buddhist nun on May 30, 1999, during the celebration there of Vesak, marking the Buddha's birth, death and passing away. "Sudhanna" means "the good Dhamma." These poems are reprinted with permission from a recent issue of the Society's newsletter
UNTITLED
A pinched nerve in the back
Sends pain all down the leg;
A little needle of craving in the heart
Sends pain all over everywhere.
UNTITLED
Thinking.
Good thoughts, bad thoughts.
Mental weeds.
SITTING 1
No itch this time,
and no pain.
Yet my mind wheels
Like a weathervane in a storm.
What will it be next?
SITTING 2
Unsatisfactoriness
This is the unsatisfactoriness of your life.
Get to know it well.
(At other times it wears many masks.)
SITTING 3
Drop that pen
and pay attention.
Dullness
Is what's going on.
Enjoy it. You don't have to do
Anything about it.
Just watch.
STORIES
Still looking for patterns in the thoughts,
Still looking for patterns in the happenings.
What are we to do with this mind---
One mad citta after another,
Creating threads of meaning with every perception,
Trying to weave them into a long veil
Of brightly-lit stories,
Hiding the darkness studded with stars awakened.
Who is that veil?
What if we were to allow it to drop
And rest in the night sky,
Just this; just this.
UNTITLED
Thumbing a ride
On the nearest breath.
A single line of mad, wild action,
Like the surfboard catching a great
crashing wave
And madly riding the plunging surf
Into shore.
Tossed on the beach, sunk in thought,
"I wonder what's for dinner?"
END OF A LONG DAY
Slipping into Eight Precepts easily,
Liking putting on a favorite gown at the end of a long day.
Rest well tonight, no troubles need arise,
So safe am I within these temple walls.
PERCEIVING
What does Ajahn Jumnien know right now?
This, this, this.
What do I know right now?
This, and that, when and what
Who, you, I mine, yours,
I want, you came, he goes, they grieve, I hurt
Wanting more, needing less,
shattered…
… so tired.
So tired.
PREVIOUSLY:
7 Poems by Douglas Imbrogno, Issue 2
5 Poems by Dinty W. Moore, Issue 1
"Sky Burial" by Michael Titus, Issue 1
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