A Collection of Buddhist Poems

This collection includes very different poems. Some retell—or, more precisely, hint at—well-known Buddhist parables. Others illustrate certain ideas and images from Buddhist philosophy. But most are Buddhist in mood. In my deep conviction, the main difference between Buddhism and most religions is not in dogma (despite all its originality) and, even more so, not in rituals, and not even in philosophy (although here the originality is even greater), but specifically in the mood—in that peculiar way of feeling the world that we also call “Buddhist.” Of course, this isn’t an absolutely unique phenomenon: for example, the Daoist way of perceiving the world is very close to the Buddhist one, and that is precisely what became the reason for Buddhism’s successful acclimatization in China and for the significant interweaving of Daoist and Buddhist motives. Still, the ice here is thin: what seems Buddhist to me today may seem to another person—or to me myself at another time—something quite distant from Buddhism. So it’s more accurate to call this collection a “collection of ‘Buddhist’ poems.”