The Buddha And Happiness Poem by Madathil Rajendran Nair

Your idol sits calm in my living room
I pass by it at least a hundred times
But never have time even to notice it once
How am I then to pause and listen
To your ancient message of wisdom
The panacea for universal peace?

Your image is just a decorative piece
That boasts of my spiritual side
When I really am miserable
Driven by innumerable wants
In a crazy samsara that ceaselessly haunts

I keep running helter-skelter
In search of fruition of my desires
And happiness, always out of reach
Receding into the horizons
Mirages the chase of which
Gives only fatigue and pain in the end

You had the courage to renounce
All that you thought belonged to you
And wander about seeking truth
Till it revealed in blazing clarity
In the sprawling shade of a Bodhi tree

Please tell me how that will came about
And will it be mine if I beseech
You everywhere, every second, without cease
So that without a trace of guilt
I can rescind all my roles –
Husband, son and everything
Like you did that lonely night

Or, have I got it all very wrong?
A story goes that someone said
“It is happiness that I want”
And you asked him with a smile
To get rid of the “I” and “want”

What then remained was “happiness”
Sure that was what you really meant
The seeker himself is happiness
If he stopped being the seeking self

Please grant me, therefore, the will
To leave my wants and ego at Your Feet
Please put me under a Bodhi tree
So that I can play my roles
Whatever they are as come by
Like a Buddha, enlightened, serene
Unhaunted by world’s trappings
As a piece of happiness that is peace