Print #50: Buddha?s Mystery

A ray of light has fallen upon the mysterious face of the Buddha, illuminating his holy presence. Sitting in deep meditation with prayer bells faintly appearing in the background, there is something peaceful and inspiring about this image.

Inspirational Poems

Buddhist Poems

Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Bring the Earth your love and happiness.
The Earth will be safe
when we feel safe in ourselves.

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. "

- Lord Buddha

To a Buddha seated on a Lotus

LORD BUDDHA, on thy lotus-throne,
With praying eyes and hands elate,
What mystic rapture dost thou own,
Immutable and ultimate?
What peace, unravished of our ken,
Annihilate from the world of men?

The wind of change for ever blows
Across the tumult of our way,
To-morrow’s unborn griefs depose
The sorrows of our yesterday.
Dream yields to dream, strife follows strife,
And Death unweaves the webs of Life.

For us the travail and the heat,
The broken secrets of our pride,
The strenuous lessons of defeat,
The flower deferred, the fruit denied;
But not the peace, supremely won,
Lord Buddha, of thy Lotus-throne.

With futile hands we seek to gain
Our inaccessible desire,
Diviner summits to attain,
With faith that sinks and feet that tire
But naught shall conquer or control
The heavenward hunger of our soul.

The end, elusive and afar,
Still lures us with its beckoning flight,
And all our mortal moments are
A session of the Infinite.
How shall we reach the great, unknown
Nirvana of thy Lotus-throne?

By Sarojini Nayadu
Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

Buddha in Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

- Rilke Maria Rainer

The Real Buddha

People perform a vast number of complex practices
hoping to gain spiritual merit as countless as the grains
of sand on the riverbed of the Ganges:
but you are essentially already perfect in every way.
Don’t try and augment perfection with meaningless practice.
If it’s the right occasion to perform them, let practices happen.
When the time has passed, let them stop.
If you are not absolutely sure that mind is the Buddha,
and if you are attached to the ideas of winning merit from spiritual practices, then your thinking is misguided and not in harmony with the Way.
To practice complex spiritual practices is to progress step by step:
but the eternal Buddha is not a Buddha of progressive stages.
Just awaken to the one Mind,
and there is absolutely nothing to be attained.
This is the real Buddha.

By Huang Po