“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.” ~ Buddha

 

They say pain opens the heart

and maybe this is true;

a man once told me he never felt love

until the doctors broke open his chest

stopped his heart and cut out the blockage.

Now love flows over and around him

and his eyes cry for joy

and for the loss of everything he did not feel

before he was torn in two.

 

If pain opens the heart

then the heart of the world is a bleeding mess

and there is no surgery skilled enough

to staunch the gaping loss:

this place where some human lives mean less

than others, this planet

that heaves and groans and hurls its children

into the unknown.

 

The side of a mountain is no place to be

even in the safest conditions; you do not want

to stay there, all that uncertain ground

falling away beneath you.

When disaster strikes

you want solid ground, you want working

cellphones, you want infrastructure and exit signs

the certainty of rescue

a place to stand which does not move.

But certainty is the habitat of the moneyed few

and not many are privileged to live there.

 

They say pain opens the heart

and my heart is open. It does not need

to be stopped, eviscerated and unblocked

in order to understand what it has lost.

Do not tell me about uncertain ground

because I already live here; do not

give me a tour of the exit signs

because I am not leaving.

I will cling to the side of this mountain

side by side with the wild unknown

these fearful prayers, this monkey mind;

they are the only words I know

so they will have to be enough.

 

 

Relephant: 

A Guided Tonglen Meditation for Nepal.

 

Author: Kara Imle

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Author’s Own