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I find Buddhism interesting, though it's not a path I follow personally. I've written a fair bit of poetry that touches on similar motifs, especially haiku. Most Buddhist poetry tends to focus on enlightenment. But there's a shadow side to the system that reveals what goes on in the unenlightened mind. Dukkha is the concept of suffering from wrong choices or thoughts, and how the harm caused to another can also complicate one's own life. So for contrast I picked a poem along this angle.
Dread like a blast of sleet-toothed wind,
Hatred like a lake of boiling lead,
Resentment like a field of deep green nettles,
Frustration like a wall of fist-dented bricks,
Anger like a forest of pines on fire,
Sorrow like a riverbed parched to mud,
Disappointment like a mist of receding mirages,
Regret like a yard of bleached white bones,
Exhaustion like a bog without a bottom,
All laid out under a sullen sky --
These places where you have led me
Now lie before you,
Placed in your path by the actions of your own hand.
The Dukkha Path
by Elizabeth Barrette
by Elizabeth Barrette
Dread like a blast of sleet-toothed wind,
Hatred like a lake of boiling lead,
Resentment like a field of deep green nettles,
Frustration like a wall of fist-dented bricks,
Anger like a forest of pines on fire,
Sorrow like a riverbed parched to mud,
Disappointment like a mist of receding mirages,
Regret like a yard of bleached white bones,
Exhaustion like a bog without a bottom,
All laid out under a sullen sky --
These places where you have led me
Now lie before you,
Placed in your path by the actions of your own hand.