Life
I wonder,
is it just a journey
from birth to death??
Born with the sorrow,
Dies with the sorrow,
Does this only mean,
The Circle of Life??
Believing the unnatural,
Living in the hope,
Does one really,
lives the life??
Living in the meaningless time,
beyond the control of self,
Does one really live in the moment??
Does one really live in the present??
With the urge of worldly desires,
Does one really enjoy??
Is life just about survival,
If there is no desire??
Even the enlightened one,
The Buddha,
couldn't deny the fact,
of the existence of sorrow,
From the first cry,
to the last breath,
we live in the sorrows,
uncontrolled cycle of emotions and desires.
There is a way,
to eradicate the sorrow,
to live a happy life.
To attain Nibbana.
To accept the existence of the problem,
To find its root,
One can understand the cause,
and prevent it to happen.
Life is to be balanced,
balanced like nature,
blissfulness lies,
in the middle path.
The Circle of Life
Isn't life beautiful? But do we really enjoy it? Do we live life to our full potential?
We are constantly running in the loop of time, we are constantly running behind our desires, we are constantly running for our and loved ones' survival, shouldn't we stop?? Why do sorrow and pain last longer, and happiness is just momentary?? We have powerful minds, though we fail to control our own lives. Our life begins with us, we are the center. We have the tendency to see the problems whether it's external or internal, or physical or mental. We affect ourselves with those problems, but we never look for solutions, we never practically work on it. If we try to solve it practically we are dependent on one or another person. If nothing else, we rest our faiths on god, karma, luck, or nature.
Four Universal Truth; also known as Four Noble Truth, is one of the teachings by Buddha, where we understand the problem, dissect it, find its roots and prevent such suffering to happen again. This is merely a practical solution for any problem, but what we need to practice is to understand the mind and its nature, understand our own behavior and our own life.
I have something interesting thing to share.
In Zen Buddhism there is a symbol called Ensō, it is the rotating circle (in reality it is a still drawing, I have just animated it) which you can see in the artwork. It is supposed to be made with freehand mainly with one brush stroke or sometimes in two strokes. It is practiced in Japan until one gets perfect in it. This symbol represents several qualities like enlightenment, the universe, completeness, and also quality like void, emptiness, imperfection. A great thing to notice in this symbol is that it is not a complete perfect circle, it has too much vastness. The only thing that matters is to create in one flow, without lifting the brush, without any modification.
I chose this symbol in the artwork because I felt that it represents the circle of life. The way we are imperfect in our life, the way there are momentary happiness or celebration. We are complete, but still, we lack, we are incomplete, and we are running and running to make our lives perfect, we try to fit in some or other desire, but we don't put effort for the mind to be free.
Thank You for reading.
Also, read 'The Thoughts & The Reason' a poem in which I talk about the thinking pattern and our tendency to give reasons for everything. (click the title)