Balance and Delusion

Balance and Delusion
 

https://grassrootsyoga.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/balance-akt.jpg

Our pleasures may enliven us
And pain could make us dull.
But pleasure, pain are needed, both.
Their sum is never null.

So when we’re robbed of pleasure and
Of joy, we might complain.
Yet wisdom comes from suffering
And empathy from pain.

Within our lives, we might find joy.
We surely will find sorrow.
But grief can give us depth, and woe
Today is light tomorrow.

There might be times when we rely
On faith and hope alone.
And yet the dark despair is when,
For sins, we might atone.

******

We could survive in the hardest times—
But fail when times are slack.
So soldiers might, in battles, surge—
And then, in peace, fall back.

Civilians die in droves in wars
In these, our modern times.
But where those wars have ended, still
The bell of karma chimes.

When food is scarce, but still in reach,
We seek—and so subsist.
But when there is surfeit of it,
Our minds and bodies list.

We starve from lack of nourishment
And die from its excess.
We strive for more of this and that—
Yet thrive when we have less.

There is a balance that we need
That Nature once provided.
But now we need a discipline,
By which we might be guided.

******

So some are helpless, forced to work.
They slave, until they sicken.
But some, who need no longer work,
Might then, by this, be stricken.

We find ourselves within a crowd—
And seek relief from this.
But then we find that solitude
Is often far from bliss.

Our children need our firmness, yet
They need us to be kind.
The middle way is often best—
But often hard to find.

We feel that we are ignorant
And so we try to learn.
But then our knowledge causes mind
And heart to fret and burn.

Our knowledge may be useful, both
For evil as for good.
So bodies may be healed by it—
Or burned like kindling wood.

*******

Some spend their years in search of love
Or sex or both and find
The one cannot be sought, the other
Snares the hapless mind.

We work to earn our living and
We work to be secure.
But then we meet the ailments that
Our money cannot cure.

We thirst for recognition, yet
May find that it’s a curse.
And I could carry on, for more—
But now should end my verse.

So I will end. Too little love
Can wound; too much can spoil.
And so it is with everything,
Including rest and toil.

2017 October 24th, Tue.
Berkeley, California