Poetry offers an alternative way of communicating; a way that is more about impression and suggestion than statement. It is also a means that proceeds from the base of the affective mind or heart, while making use of imagery, sound, spaces, and allusions – the language of the heart. It is centred on, or tries to return to, the experience we have before we can formulate it into our prescribed world-view. As such it can take us past our world-view, and by reminding us that it is a view rather than a fixed reality, serve to continually moderate that world. Something transformative can occur.
‘Dhamma’ is the word that the Buddha used to describe his teachings, his way of aligning the mind to truth. What it advocates are morality, meditation and wisdom, practices that also continually hold the world in a questioning and moderating way. The ways of communicating those teachings and practices are varied and often attuned to the disposition of the learner: lecture, ritual, pilgrimage, and sitting in silence are all means that are used to bring across this life-changing Dhamma. Some of the most moving teachings and realisations of the Buddha and his disciples are expressed in poetic form. Some Dhamma has to be learnt through working, or by being with others.
In this site, we offer a channel for those who attune to poetry. Here we present expressions from the minds and hearts of people who are practising Dhamma. These are not instructions on how to meditate or on the value of ethical living (although they may invite such reflections) but practice-notes on the joys, struggles, humour and pain of the journey towards truth and freedom.
If the discourses of the Buddha and the teachings of his realised disciples can rightly be likened to a great sun giving its light and radiance, this site presents a moon-lit glow. A touch of mystery, a glimpse of something ineffable at a quiet time. A Dhamma Moon.
… Meanwhile if you would like to look into the tradition that this website hearkens from and take in some of its teachings – the website forestsangha.org will give you access. May your path open before you.
Editors:
Ajahn Sucitto
Ajahn Abhinando
Peter Fernando (consultant editor)
Contact:
dhammamoon
c/o Bhikkhu Abhinando
Kloster Dhammapala
Bütschelsstrasse 74
3718 Kandersteg
Switzerland
All poems on this website are published by permission of the authors.
The copyright for the poems and translations on this website lies with the respective authors and/or their publishers.
Credits:
The photos on this website are by Chinch Gryniewicz, who also holds the copyright for them: www.chinch-gryniewicz.com
The Website icon for this site has been created by Aldric Rodríguez Iborra from the Noun Project.
The development of this site has been offered by Kris Quigley of affinity-tech.com.
Disclaimer
The views expressed in the materials on or linked to www.dhammamoon.org are entirely those of each of the respective authors. The contents on all the websites linked to, or from dhammamoon.org is entirely the responsibility of those who publish and maintain those websites.