The Lonely Buddhist Poem by Sonny Rainshine

He traveled to Rangoon
amid lotus blossoms strewn,
there to learn not to flinch
at the withering and the stench
of the bodies of monks
in decay.

In some way
he sought release from the pain;
he thought from deprivation to attain
the shining, sharp dagger of peace
and to plunge into it until the cease
of suffering.

Buffering himself
from the rigors of life,
his fear was the butter, he was the knife.
Never did he suspect that loneliness
was the root of his stress,
his banishment,

a vanishing point
of no return, his achilles heel.
There, drifting in the incense, he’d feel
for once the yearning of us all,
to break the membrane of self-absorption and the wall
of separation.