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)