Do Plastics and Bombs Have Buddha-nature or not? | Poetry of Mankh |Axisoflogic.com

        Has a dog Buddha-nature?
        This is the most serious question of all.
        If you say yes or no,
        You lose your own Buddha-nature.

- translation from 13th century text
The Gateless Gate*

Eastern Zen-Buddhist and Western Zen-Buddhist having a chat ―

Western Zen-Buddhist says:
Turns out Trump was wrong because
Joe can’t be too Sleepy because
he authorized bombing Syria
which killed 17 people maybe more,
for oil.

No!, the Eastern Zen-Buddhist serenely exclaims,
Trump was right,
only the un-awake bomb people,
so Joe is Sleepy
yet more so, Saṃsāra Joe

Saṃsāra is considered a sea of suffering,
a perpetuation of ignorance and greed,
a repeating cycle of misery and death due to bad karma,
you could say –
in your Western geo-political Buddhist terminology –
a repeating cycle of Democrats and Republicans
backed by militant corporations.

Also floating around in this current sea of world suffering:
microplastics, oil spills, and flushed down the toilet
big pharma drugs and more,
and along suburban roadways everywhere
gas stations,
and pharmacies selling little plastic bottles
(helpful for some, of course),
and convenience stores selling bigger plastic bottles
the bigger the bottle the cheaper the price,
the cheaper the price the bigger the problems
the bigger the problems . . .
How inconvenient!
Seems no end to the plastics,
seems no end to the cycle of Saṃsāra.

i confess to hitting the glass bottle once in a while!,
the Western Zen-Buddhist serenely exclaims,
and then i like to watch Pat Sajak and Vanna White
but this worldly wheel of fortune has got to go,
this going around in greedy violent circles
and expecting a different result,
isn’t that the definition of insanity Einstein gave?

The Eastern Zen-Buddhist takes a deep breath
then gives the breath back to the universe
from whence it came,
then another deep breath and exhaling says:
Plastics are extracted from the earth
from natural gas, oil, coal, minerals and plants,
another repeating cycle.
With all the plastic casings –
the keyboard, the mouse,
the cell-phone, the car door handle,
the gas pump handle –
people have lost the feel for things
and of where they come from,
lost the feel for the actual energy moving through,
like holding a hand,
touching the rough textures of a tree,
a dog’s soft hair,
flock of birds wheeling in the midday air

NOTE
* The Gateless Gate, by Ekai, called Mu-mon, compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, 1934. See here.

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet at Axis of Logic, as well as a correspondent-poet for the WUSB 90.1FM radio segment “Radical Words”. In addition to his work as a writer and small press publisher, he travels a holistic mystic pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. His website is here.

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