Poems by Ajahn Buddhadasa

The World Today
Sometimes I have a chat with “God,”
Who looks after this trembling world
With so much tolerance, kindness, and care,
Yet the world’s beings still tremble and quake.

The world is stinking drunk on materialism,
Heartbroken with pains worse than violent death.
“Living dead” hour to hour as if life is a joke
Is worse than dying just once into the coffin.

Whatever they attempt, they still miss seeing the path,
Too terrified of giving up and abandoning everything.
It will happen only when Dhamma returns just in time
And the world turns towards the joy of Sri Araya’s Age.*

❖ ❖ ❖

(*) Sri Araya Mettaya is popularly believed to be the next Buddha, who will usher in an era of peace and universal kindness.

 

Work

That work gives humanity its true value
and is of the highest honor there's no doubt.
If one enjoys work with a blossoming heart,
soon knowledge of Dhamma deeply pervades.

Because work is the very essence of Dhammic living,
superbly bringing together wholesome virtues,
By analogy, compare the intelligent sharpshooter
who with a single shot bags a sack full of birds.

Naturally, work is to be done mindfully,
with calm focus, patience, and industry,
with honesty, self-control, and intelligence,
with faith and courage, truly love your work.

The more one works, the more these dhammas flourish
promoting the transcendent shore without pause;
seeing the universal characteristics in everything,
in a flash plunging into vimutti* and freeing itself.


❖ ❖ ❖


(*) Vimutti = liberation, release

 

The More Learning, The More Stupid

The world today is encyclopedically foolish,
because of texts heaped upon us to death's door,
all these books, papers, journals, and the rest
as we outdo each other in overflowing the libraries.

With scriptures flooding their heads till they waddle,
knowledge flooding their hearts most pitifully,
weary scholars washed out by their studies,
a world staggering without the light of Dhamma.

The more learning the more stupid, it's hard to believe,
but the simple matter is ridiculously thus,
learning only what pulls the mind into more karma,
fondling sensuality, raving mad about status & fame.

Lots of play, eating too much, excessive money,
babbling speech, indulgent veterans in obscenity,
whoever upsets is joyfully cursed all day long —
yet they think this gravely malignant ignorance is good.


❖ ❖ ❖

 

Noble Arahant

“Arahant” is perfectly “right,”
both freed from every kind of dukkha
and realized in the fullness of humanity,
more worthy of respect than any other.

Having broken the cycles of samsara,
without a self to be reborn in any place,
beyond good and bad, right and wrong —
just a mind void of “me” and “mine.”

Heart freed of everything that ever claimed it,
with no dangers or poisons left to harm,
beyond birth and death. Check it out,
so that you realize Nibbana just like them.


❖ ❖ ❖

 

Come Back, Siladhamma!

Come back, Siladhamma, come back!
A monstrous danger is building up
for all beings scattered throughout the universe:
the enormous destruction is frightening.

Come back, Siladhamma, come back!
In the world a dark era has appeared, so
crazy about material things, not just by chance
having a good old time with powerful things.

Come back, Siladhamma, come back!
Evil encroaches until hopes are gone.
Hurry back before it's too late
to save the world in the nick of time.


❖ ❖ ❖

 

Poems by Ajahn Buddhadasa :- https://www.suanmokkh.org/poems

 

Nalike Pond

Samsara's spinning is just like stormy seas,
but its value splits off in two ways:
now nasty, now good, spinning in time
according to the concocting of conditions.

Just as wax is solid when cooled, then
melts and flows when subjected to heat,
the sea of good & evil twitches back & forth
— beyond is freedom, coolness, Nibbana.

“The coconut palm” tho' dwelling midst the sea of wax,
doesn't split with changing conditions.
Rain doesn't touch, lightening doesn't threaten,
because it is beyond the concocting of all evil & good.

❖ ❖ ❖

 

Buddhadasa Never Dies | A Poem Written by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu

Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
BUDDHADASA NEVER DIES A poem written by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu (on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, 27 May 1987)

Translated from the Thai into English by Santikaro Bhikkhu, 28 April 1994 Note: "Buddhadasa" in this poem doesn't primarily refer to him.