Inspirational Poems by A.S.Balasooriya

• Dance of fireflies

adores the moonlit night

• The cranes roosting on the wild tree by the river,

keep watching the moon’s reflection

on the running water.

• The hungry man’s legs could

standing no more

when he smelled a roasting food

in a wayside house.

• Butterfly:

The world is full of flowers

Bee:

The world is full of honey

The fly:

The world is of full of filth.

• The child sends his kite

to the dream world

of the future.

• Standing by the pond in silence

A stream of joy rising within.

I don’t want to inquire why.

• A priest is in a jet.

But his belief is

in a bullock cart.

• Never ask a bird

Why and to whom

you are singing.

• To the dead peacock:

When you were dancing

there wasn’t a clue of death.

• The man who incessantly

talked is now silent.

This is the moment of repentance.

• A wave of fragrance of jasmine flowers

Sweeping through the sermon hall.

Even the preacher stops for a moment to breathe it.

• Whenever I cross the river

It is always new water.

• I returned to the old village of my youthful days

after thirty five years.

Where are the dear fellows

then known to me!

• A recluse lying down

under a tree in the grove.

‘Any place is home.

to me who has renounced my home’

• The ugly faced man who married

a beautiful lady

has never said to her: ‘You are beautiful’

• O! Food!

I bear up all the hardship

of the world because of you.

• The priest in the temple

who was has been calling God

for half a century

missed to make out Him

when He appeared at last.

• The distant dangers

Are closer than they appear to be.

• Only when I rested away from

the game I had been playing

I happened to know

what it was really!

Now I play it knowingly.

• When the doer ceases to be

Action blooms like a flower.

Excerpts from A.S.Balasooriya’s Book of Poetry: Dew Drops on the Lotus.( Script )

The Cure of Love

This is a story of a miracle of love.
A beggar in ragged clothes was laying on a payment
of a dusty street road. Middle-aged he seemed dissolute and helpless.
His eyes kept watching on passers by
for any help but no one even cared to look at him.

He was ill and so weak even to stretch out a hand to beg.
Add to the insult he was starving for he hasn’t eaten for several days.
So desperate he murmured painfully and said.
‘What is the use of this living. O! Death take me away from this unkind world’
Then he heard soft foot steps of someone approaching him

Opening eyes he saw a young lady with a grace of a goddess
standing in front of him. She asked ‘Are you ill, father’
The voice was so sweet, so kind.

She gracefully bent down over him and laid her hand
on his forehead and exclaimed ‘O dear!High fever’
No one had spoken to him with such kindness.,
No one had touched him with such a tender hand.
He said ‘Yes, my daughter,I am sick and let me die.’
She said ‘Oh! No. Please wait a minute’ and went away.

After a few minute a car arrived and she got out of it with a young man.
She pleaded the young man,“Priyantha, Let us help his man.
He is sick to the bone
Let us take him to hospital’
Both of them carried him into the car.

On the way he uttered in hunger " For days I didn’t eat anything’
The car stopped in front of a way side hotel.
She went out and brought a glass of soup and a pizza.’.

He swallowed them as if he has never seem such delicious food.
She asked ‘ What else do you want to eat’ he said: 'Enough! Thank God!'
While driving she said to the young man ‘Priyantha, he looks like my father. Isn’t he’?
Priyantha joked ‘I know, for you , every one on the roads looks like your father, mother, sister or brother’
They laughed heartily and the man in the back seat also could not help but join the laughter''

They admitted the sick man to the hospital and accompanied him to the bed in the ward
When he lay comfortably she touched his forehead again and said softly
'You will be O.K very soon.
'You will be care of. Don’t worry'

On the departure biding good bye she kept an folded envelop on his palm .
When they left the ward he slowly opened the envelop
and found a one thousand rupee note.

Never he has had such on in his hand.
He cried and shedding tears.
He couldn’t believe that there was such love,
warmth and kindness on earth.
He sobbed and sobbed. .

The love was healing his the suffering and hurt as an divine elixir.
He heart began to throb with new life.
He was coming back to life.

He said to himself: ‘Living is beautiful’.
Never had he felt that way.
With overflowing joy he opened his eyes and looked around.
He saw the patients lying around in him

He felt compassion for them.
It was also for the first time in life.

A soothing sleep came over him as a caring angel from heaven.
Even in sleep he felt that joy was throbbing deep within
On the following day being awake he found a new life
as fresh as blooming rose in a morning.
Happiness has come back to him.

Upon complete recovery and stepped out of the hospital.
Thereafter he was never found again begging on the street.

This is a story of a miracle of love.

Abode of Pure Living

Abode of Pure Living

Life is a mansion with two stories; a basement and upper floor.

But we live only in the basement not knowing the other. It is the abode of hope and despair, pleasure and pain, sorrow and happiness. It is a maze of thoughts.

The other floor is the realm of pure living beyond thoughts and time.
No thought can touch it; no event can affect it. Living there is only in here and now.

One who has not discovered it, is a prisoner of the dark basement of life. His is a victim of his own thoughts.

He struggles for living but never really lives.

Discover the abode of pure living.

(Excerpt from A.S.Balasooriya’s “Joys of the liberated mind”.(2007))

Consciousness and Mind: What is the Difference?

A Discussion with A.S. Balasooriya

Questioner: What is the difference between the consciousness and the mind? Are they same or different?

Balasooriya: These words as popularly used have no distinct definitions. Some use them in the same sense as synonyms, interchangeably. However, here we can attempt at coming to a clear understanding of the two phenomena.

What is mind? Is there such a thing called mind at all? Of course there is thought. You experience it. You experience it arising, running, changing directions, going from one to another. Mind is a projection of thoughts like the apparent circle of fire when you are rotating a glowing stick in a dark night. What you have really is the movement. The quick succession of movements creates the illusion of a circle of fire. Likewise the quick arising and falling of thoughts create the illusion of mind.

Q: You mean : No thought no mind!

B: Right!

Q: Then what is consciousness?

B: Consciousness is also such a projection arising from a group of thoughts.

Q: Explain it.

B:. People speak of consciousness as it is something static, permanent. There is no permanent consciousness. It changes from situation to situation, act to act. For example when you are watching a cinema you are in a different consciousness. Then you are in the consciousness of a spectator. When the show is over you came back to the normal consciousness.

Q: You said early that consciousness arises from a group of thoughts

B: I meant a that consciousness is a product of a particular programme of thoughts. A thought does not arise in isolation. It is a response of mental programme. Take a practical example: What is your response when you hear the word: ‘money’? The responding thought arises from the programme of thoughts, concepts, fears, egoistic motives. You have developed over the past. One thought is connected to a series of thoughts.

Q: Who is the programmer?

B: You are your own programmer! There is no God to decide on your fate. You programme life through your choices of attitudes, values, actions. You choose by your past, cultural, religious and idiosyncratic learning. Isn't a person but a collection of scripts conditioned by the society at large. Is there thinking apart from the stuff stored in the store house of the consciousness?

Q: Yes. Each believer is thinking along the path conditioned by his religion.

B: You see that all organized religions prohibits free thinking. Because such thinking poses a threat to their establishments.

Q: Each religion builds a particular consciousness in its believers.: The Muslim consciousness, Christian consciousness and soon.

B: Consciousness is like a big city with thousands of different stores. In close analysis your consciousness is made of many, many fragmented consciousnesses; small consciousnesses. At a given moment there is the never ending struggle within to surge up one over another. The mind is always in a conflict within itself between different consciousnesses.

Q: You are right when you say that no thought is arise by itself.

B: That is why it is difficult for a person to change, let go the whole of him but even a single thought, attitude or values. All of them are intertwined together as network.. Other supporting thoughts do not allow changing one thought. Here I mean deep changes within, not accommodations, assimilations, shaping and adjustment etc. They are superficial. How much you adjust superficially inwardly you are same. Aren't you?

Q: Can a person change deeply?

B: To explore it we have to find out what is awareness. What is awareness? Again it is a broad concept with a variety of levels of meaning. The consciousness and awareness differ from each other in that the consciousness is a personal construction where as awareness is an intrinsic faculty.

Q: You mean to say that consciousness is constructed while awareness is natural.

B: True. Let’s see go into what is awareness. There is general awareness going all the time. That you have cognition of where you are, what you are doing and with whom you are and so on. With more attention it can be made clearer. This state of cognition can be marred by the thoughts and emotions arising within you.

Q: How the awareness relates to consciousness?

B: The consciousness is like the colour in a glass. On the other hand awareness is spotless. It sees the reality as it is. We were discussing what true change in man is. The true change is awakening from consciousness to awareness. In the light of awareness man changes.

Nirvana

Nirvana !

Nirvana !

It was a charming and serene night at the nuns’ hermitage.

A nun rising up from her evening meditation came out of the hut to wash her face.

The full moon was shining in the cloudless sky. As she bent over the vessel of water, she was astonished to see golden reflection of the moon on it. She washed her face and feet.

The spilt water draining downward on the ground glittered like gold in the moon light. It disappeared as it got slowly absorbed into the soil. She sighed ‘Where is the shine?’

At that moment she realized that under the sky nothing is permanent. Everything that arises falls away. Whatever that forms dissolves away. The world is nothing but a continuous flow moment to moment like a never ending river. Pleasure and pain arise and fall away.

With this insight her mind stood still. No thought! No mind ! In that silence the boundless universe opened.

‘What a wonder! What a relief!”She exclaimed. ‘Aha! This what the Buddha called Nirvana.! The end of human suffering! Isn’t this what I had been seeking for ages? Freedom at last!’

With the overflowing ecstatic joy she heartily laughed and laughed.

Excerpt form A.S.Balasooriya's ' Joy of the Liberated Mind" (2007)

Beauty in small things

Beauty in small things

Have you ever cared to look at a tiny wild flowers besides
the trail you walk daily up and down.?
Looking at them and you may wonder at their beauty so vivid in colors and shapes.

So far a flower meant to you something big.
You had a definite shape and size in mind.
You trampled tiny flowers because to you they were not flowers.
Usually we admire big things. We are lost in searching for big things in life,
a big house, a big car, a big garden.and so on.
How can such a mind, see the elegance
of small things, small acts, small events?
While reading this, stop for a second and listen to a chirping of a bird.
Look at the ant running on your table. Look at the tiny dew drops in a morning hanging at the end of leaves,
ready to fall down with the next wind.

When you wash your plate do it whole heartedly.
Enjoy a kind word some one speaks to you. Enjoy the greetings of others in a morning as you walk into the office. Enjoy the smiles of people passing by.
Life is full of small enjoys, moments of happiness, beauties and blessings.
Focusing on them will open a world so far you had forgotten.

Know the joys Life.

Our present concept of joy seems so rude and primitive.
We think that joy comes at the end of an achievement, not otherwise.
If you really seek joy in life the first step is to know it at the moment it arises.
We can of course identify big joys. However many a small joys go unnoticed.
Big joys are rare indeed in life. But small joys are abundant.
They are like the tiny flowers you trample on grass while walking.

Be sensitive to small joys.
Practise it as a meditation.
Go to a silent place..
Free your mind from the past and future .
Let go all the burdens. Feel free.
Come to the present movement.
When the mind is free and unoccupied with things of the thoughts,
Joy starts emerging out as a secret spring from the depth of your being.

Focus on joy arising from the inner being and get absorbed into it.
Joy arises in various qualities like the different perfumes.
Your mind needs to be subtle to make out them.
Being sensitive to subtle joys makes you inwardly rich, because joy is the wealth in life.

Excerpts from: 'Ocean in a drop of water'

Wonder

Wonder

If a lump of copper turns into gold overnight

what a wonder will it be ?

Transforming inner suffering into Joy

is also a wonder similar to it.

What is this transforming force? It is Love.

Love dissolves away the hard core of the sorrow which is ‘I”

Surely Love is beyond self.

Choice

Where truth is a flower, false is a paper flower.

Where a pleasant word spoken is a bunch of flowers giving others,

A hard word is stone thrown to hurt another.

Where a wise word is a gem, an empty word is lump of soil.

Where craving is fire, freedom from craving is a cool blow of wind.

Where sorrow is the growing darkness in an evening , joy is the bright light in the morning.

In very juncture of life, there is a choice.

Your life is build upon the bricks of your choice.

Whom do you represent ?

Leaders are of two kinds:

Those who represent God and those who represent Devil.

Those who represent God build peace ,

harmony, happiness and prosperity on Earth.

Devil’s representatives on the other hand, work to divide humanity.

Division leads to conflict and conflict leads to destruction.

Even you, dear friend, belong to one of these groups.

Whom do you represent?

God or Devil?

Rolling snow ball.

Have you ever seen how a snow ball rolling down from mountain ? .

It is interesting to observe how they snow balls form.

It begins with a tiny snow particle slipping down.

As it slips down it gathers into it a few snow particles.

Thus in process of rolling it becomes larger and larger.

The speed of rolling also gathers momentum until it becomes an irresistible force.

When you see an injustice in your society you tend to

wonder what you could do as an single individual.

But if you start an action wherever people gradually join you,

making it into a larger and lager social movement

like a rolling snow ball.

Human Progress.

There is a common belief that ostrich hides its head in the sand

to run away from danger. I don’t know whether it is true.

We laugh off such behavior but we are no better.

Suppose someone criticizes my beliefs.

My tendency is to protect the belief through strengthening them

rather than changing or giving it up. I refuse to listen it.

As a result my intelligence stales.

I get caught to a narrow grove.

The poet William Blake said: ‘Expect poison from stagnant waters’

When stagnant within I become an agent of constraining

the progress not only mine but also others.

Fixed ideologies, be it religious, political, or whatever

bring slow death to human intelligence.

As a man cannot move swiftly forward with heavy stones bound to legs,

With fixed ideas, beliefs you cannot discover what is truth.

The human progress lies from false to truth and from truth to truth.

Spiritual life

Peaceful living goes hand in hand with spiritual living, because the ultimate source of peace is spirituality. By spirituality is that inner self that part within which is ever pure and therefore by the world and its ways.

This inner recess is as pure as the deepest water in a river.

A river may carry dirt on the surface yet in the deepest level water can pure and fresh as ever.

Spirit is the spring from which higher living qualities like happiness, love, beauty and peace arise. These human qualities are various expressions of basic Goodness in human nature.

Now it is obvious what is that drives man to be good. The Call comes from the spirit or the seat of spirituality. The more you experience Goodness the more you rise high. This is what we call human development.
The outer directed man is driven by the worldly rewards. He wants to fill life with things of the world. The inner directed life is different. He seeks for fulfillment through experiencing Goodness in forms of Love, Wisdom and Beauty
In the ancient Veda Scripture there is a simile to illustrate this. It goes like this: Two birds are sitting on a tree. One bird is eating fruit. The other is sitting quiet fulfilling itself through the food of inner bliss. The inner directed man is like the second bird. He knows the art of fulfilling the self deeply without struggling to achieve in world.

I read somewhere about a person who paid a visit to a sage in the Himalayas. He found the sage always deeply absorbed within with closed eyes. He asked ‘Sadhu, why are you always keeping your eyes shut’ The sage answered: ‘Son, Compared to the Joy I experience within there is hardly anything in the objective world for me to look and enjoy.’

Excerpts from'Ocean in a drop of water'

The Voice of Life

The Voice of Life

One day awakened early in the morning,
I found Life was abundantly overflowing in me.
I asked Life' Want do you want' ?
It responded:
'Let me freely bloom like a lotus in a pond
Let me freely flow like river full of water
Let me freely emerge out like a fresh spring
Let me freely fly in high sky like a seagull'

Desire and Love

Love is stained with desire
But Compassion is as pure as a dew drop
.
If love is copper then Compassion is gold
If love is glass, then Compassion is Gem.

Love within the realm of pleasure.
Compassion is beyond pleasure.
In love there is a lover
In Compassion there is action itself.

Compassion has neither form nor quality.
Love ends in sorrow.
Compassion finds its completion in the Bliss.

Excerpts from: '' Ocean in a drop of water

Ocean in a drop of water

Ocean in a Drop of Water

Take a drop of water from the sea.

If it appears to you as nothing but

merely a drop of water then you are still within

the existential cycle of birth and death.

Friend, The whole of ocean exists

in a drop of water.

Take a lump of soil .

If it appears to you as nothing but

merely a lump of soil, you are still within

the existential cycle of birth and death.

Friend, The whole of earth exists

Within a lump of soil.

Look at your life.

If feel it as nothing

but your own life still you are within

the existential cycle of birth and death.

Friend, The life of all beings exists

in your life.

Look at your consciousness.

If you perceive it as nothing but

merely your own consciousness then you are still

within the existential cycle of birth and death.

Friend, The whole human consciousness

exists in your consciousness. .

If you feel you to be nothing but you

then you are still

within the existential cycle of birth and death.

Friend , You are

the whole Universal Self .

Your Actions

How you act reflects back on you

Some acts grow you old.

What kind of acts ?

Routine acts

Some acts make you young.

What kind of acts?

Creative acts.

Some acts makes you dark

What kind of acts?

Negative minded acts

Some acts makes you shine

What kind of acts?

Wise acts.

The Reality

Some accept. Others reject.

Some believe. Others doubt.

Some explain it in one way.

Others in different ways.

Some perceive it positively

Others negatively

Some observe it

Others do not

But the Reality exists as it is.

Excerpts from 'Ocean in a drop of water"

Excerpts from A.S. Balasooriya’s recent book ‘Lotus Blossoms on Calm Water’ (From Page 20 to 25)

(Language : Sinhala :Published by Wijesooriya Grantha Kendraya. 812 Maradana Road, Punchi Borella, Sri Lanka.The (Transalation by the author).

On Creative Living

Let me tell you my inner response when I see people displaying their various creative talents on stages.
Aren’t their creativity separate from the actual living? . When creativity in separated from life it becomes illusion. In fact illusion not creativity., but something quite contradictory.. It deceives life and it becomes an easy escape form Truth.
I wonder , if people care to use their creativity to enhance the meaning and beauty of life, in their daily behavior and relationships, the way they perceive the world, what a beautiful world will come out of it.

* * * * * * * The The Creator and the Created
One day the created happed to meet the creator. Over whelmed by sheer joy he uttered :‘Thou dwellth in me from the beginning ‘The creator responded:: ‘‘Thou too dwellth in me from the beginning’
In great rejoice they embraced each other and uttered: ‘We are not two entities but only one’! Only one!”.

* * * * * * * * * *
My light is enough for me

A fire fly while wandering through out the night happed to witness the rising sun. With awe and wonder it entered into the dark cave where it used to dwell in the day time.
Unable to restrain the wonder it whispered to its friend and said:’ I saw the Sun . What a glori0ousd thing? It sheds its light on the whole of the earth. You must see it . I say you must !
His friend responded indifferently : ‘My light is enough for me.’

Most of us also live with the same kind of self complacency.with attitudes like ‘ My knowledge is enough!’ ‘The way I live is good for me.’ ‘There is nothing to seek more in life’

* * * * * * * * * *

Old woman in the young girl

Friend,
If you can see the old woman in a young girl
Surely you will also be able to see
The young girl in an old woman.

* * * * * * * * * *

In Love with Life

Stepping out of the house in that early bright and serene morning I saw the Sun coming out
of the golden clouds.What a glorious and majestic view! I was elated with joy. Unable to constrain the overflowing joy I exclaimed:
''Life is so beautiful! So marvelous!
I am madly in love with it.!’

* * * * * * * * * *

Be Open to the Universe

When the Living Beauty of the Universe flows within you will begin to bloom like a rose in this ugly world. When the Universal Love flows within you will become a sprinkling cool fountain in the world aflame by the fire of hatred..
When the Peace of the Heavens flows within you will be as quiet as a still water in the this restless world.
When the Universal Wisdom flows within you will glow like a flame in a in this dark world of ignorance.
Therefore let go the narrow self with its problems and be open to the Universal Self.

* * * * * * * * * *

You have made me so rich !

Oh! The God of the Universe,
You have made so rich
By emptying my inner self
From all I that I have gathered.

* * * * * * * * * *
Total Living

Life has two dimensions as two gears as in a motor car.
The first dimension is the psychological In this realm the thoughts are predominant. The thoughts functions as reactors to all the challenges- to what you see , hear and feel.
You experiences life through thoughts.
Here living is confined to the response of the thought process.
The second dimension is realm the pure living.
It is beyond the realm of thoughts. There is time here as past, or future.
The emotions the mind produces as sorrow, happiness cannot touch its ever pure energy. There you are face to face with the living reality of here and now. Living is total and holistic.
There is no person here but only Life.
Man who has not discovered this dimension of pure living is like
an one eyed person. His eyes see only conflicts side of life.
He struggles for living but never really lives.
In the second dimension you know how to live. Life is all the time fulfilling itself.
One can live with utmost peace only in this realm. In fact it is the source of peace on earth.
However you need for successful living the efficient functioning
in both the dimensions.

As long as the second dimension is neglected or lies
undiscovered life tends to be a sorrowful affair.

* * * * * * * * * *
Joy of Completion.

All artists appreciate their work after it is done.
Now can we too, learn to appreciate and feel satisfied our daily works on their completion.
I call it the joy of completion.
This is something that any earnest person has to learn.

Many a people haven’t learned this joy and therefore simply pass it away not knowingly. How satisfactory a day can be if we reflect back it at the end and feel good ?
How fulfilling a work can be if we reflect at the its completion?

The tragedy with us that we live with a mind
which never has learnt to feel content with whatever we achieve.
Our mind is in a mad rat race always wanting aspiring, desiring and hoping.
Have you observed that when you act or work most of the time you are half attended. The best part of the mind is somewhere lost in dreaming.
The more you act or work with complete attention the more you experience the joy of completion at the end.
We have to learn to feel satisfied at the end of every bit of work or act we do.
We as human beings need the sense of achievement at the latter days of our life.
Other wise how can we face death with a sense of completion ?
The holistic life satisfaction arises
from the abundant experiences of the joy of completions in our life.

* * * * * * * * *

Learning to enjoy working

The fruit of labor is sweet.. True enough!
But we have to learn to enjoy working rather than looking forward to enjoy its fruit at the end.
Why? Because a greater part of our life is working.
If we hate work, we in fact hate life itself. I do not demean the achievement- the fruit of labour.
But the fact is that the joy of achievement is so short.
The human nature is such that once we fulfill a need the value given get diminished.
Then we focus on another goal.
The challenge of life is in the process of living.
Can we learn to enjoy the moments of struggle in overcoming difficulties, completely flowing with the action.?
Let the hero within you emerge out.

* * * * * * * * * *

Glimpses of Truth

Mind is like a brush which paints on the canvas of the pure present
with hues of the past.
In fact it is discoloring the clarity of the present moment.
This action of the mind prevents us from perceiving the present as it is.
So my question is: How can I perceive the present as it is?
The Life is in the present.
All what one can do is to be watchful how the past coloring the present
from moment to moment.

* * * * * * * * * *
The sense of security, I mean here, the psychological security is an illusion.
Life is a continues process of movement.
Every movement disturbs the status quo in one way or another.
Some are extremely painful.
The security we rely upon is so temporal and so elusive.
How can I depend an illusion?
The fact is that there is no security for man.Every person is insecure.
The question here how to live with a sense of insecurity ?
There is a totally different security is life.
That is being awake challenge of the reality.
Awareness dispels fear created by the mind.

* * * * * * * * * *





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