Peace Pagoda

 

White pagoda in the hills

Spreads the hope of peace,

Surprise, that even in God’s abode,

Harmony comes to cease

And we need a message carved in stone,

Whiter than the Kanchen peak,

Wherever ‘tis we spread our wings

Peace plays hide and seek

 

The golden Buddha stares within,

Could we be all like you?

Could we all trade our gilded lives

To seek what is that’s true?

But if we did, would we be here?

No, neither you or me,

No emptiness would drive our will

This world anew to see

 

 

 

 

To find Gaya in Darjeeling,

We need to go astray,

Life hidden in the silver lines

In the folds of a cloudy day;

What else be there in our muddled lives,

If there was nothing left to seek,

One day, for all to come together –

Pagoda, pilgrim, peak…

 

25^th February, 2023

 

Inspired at the Peace Pagoda, Darjeeling that perhaps offers the best view of the sprawling city guarded by the Himalaya. I have seen the Peace Pagoda in other places before (Rajgir in Bihar and Bhubaneshwar in Orissa) all built by the Nipponzan-Myōhōji Buddhist Order. Every time, I have admired their marmoreal beauty and the message of the Buddha. Yet, every time I have wondered how many more of these pagodas will we require. The answer perhaps is there will be no end, for we will be unchanged – there will be chaos and confusion always, for that is the bedrock of life. But that paradoxical foundation alone perhaps will lead us to seek answers –for peace doesn’t make us ask questions, pain does, the yang to fulfil our yin.  What we need then is not eternal peace but signs on our weary way that other pilgrims had traversed this very path in the past in the quest for peace, and some of them indeed reached the end. It doesn’t matter where we find these signs – in a musty book in our city apartment, in the lofty snow clad Himalaya or in a pagoda perched high upon the hills…