Under the Bodhi Tree
      By JoHannah P. Green

Each moment is pain, loss, death,
because we place it before us
and our desires make of our spirit
a begging bowl.
Hope is
our insanity,
easily diagnosed.
We continue
to name everything around us
and own
everything/nothing.

Mine,
or not
mine,
a million tiny desires
tie us down.
We are
Gulliver among the Lilliputians.
Not stuff
just
the desire for stuff
is
our chain,
forged by our own hand/
our own mind.

The Buddha sat down under the Bodhi tree
because he no longer
desired.
His begging bowl
thrown in the river
floated upstream
against the current of humankind;
against reason and irrationality,
against love and fear,
against attachment to
I, me, my, mine.
He tried to teach us,
but we desire
not to be free.