Luck vs Fortune
Ambitious Students? In order to reach the top colleges, certainly SAT’s, AP exams, and high student-rankings are valuable assets, all. But the Ivy Leagues have plenty of applicants with the highest scores. I would argue that of greater importance is our character, particularly our leadership and our ability to contribute positively and constructively to our academic community. But even greater still, we need a certain fortune; that fortune which comes as a result of our sincerity and our ability to respect and appreciate the foundations upon which we stand: Fortune is, in part then, a function of Gratitude and of the will to nourish the roots of benevolence…
A Father’s Hope
A Father’s Lament
By Nur AbdurRashid
The lone sound
of that bird’s song
Takes me back
to that time before
I cared
about
the world.
Who am I
to take
that freedom from concern
away… from my boys?
When are children to become
aware?
Sing,
Lovely bird,
Your song of
Care and concern:
Be true, so true,
Through and through.
Be true, so true,
Through and through.
The First Frost
by Nur Abdur Rashid
. . . a tree waved at me
from the side of the road, this morning,
dropping a few leaves
as if to say,
remember me.
Not a question.
A statement, an assertion
inserted in my peripheral vision.
A season begins;
sons become fathers,
though Spring is far off.
Fathers expect more than
sons care to divulge,
sons who prefer to stay
in a former Spring.
Chills.
The winter, not yet begun,
tightens the sinews.
The first frost lies crisp, a subtle
nodal point, residue
of the music
of the morning fog
that kisses the dawny toraji and flows low
in the winding crevices,
just below the crest of
pensive hills.
In these hills,
Dropping a few leaves
a tree waved, “hello”
. . . there is a season
turn, turn, turn.
Silver and Gold
by Nur Abdur Rashid
April skies are silver and gold
silky rain is soothing
to my anxious soul
teasing out new buds
and sprouts
Orchids and Azelias
peek out, anew
in this year of
the White Horse
Fantastic !
What a day!
When night gives way to day,
and sunlight breaks on
yesterdays’ horizon
When crickets lose their effect
to the hustle and bustle
of a hurly burly dawn…
I feel Fantastic in
anticipation of being
here and now reborn!
To Gratitude and Beyond
“Be Aware of Grace and Requite It”, — Soe Tae-San, 1891-1946 (Founder of “Won” Buddhism)
Gratitude requires one to realize one’s indebtedness to what Soe Tae-San calls the “Four Graces,” namely, 1) Heaven and Earth, 2) Parents, ) Brethren, and 4) Law; one is also required to requite them by modeling oneself on the way of indebtedness to them.
Let us pursue then the way of fortune, we need not rely on mere luck: Let us desire (and live for) the welfare of others. What are we, if not awakening Bodhisattvas, ourselves? Shantideva, an 8th-century Buddhist scholar from northern India, wrote The Bodhicaryavatara (or, “In Praise of the Awakening Mind”). In Chapter One, one excerpt speaks so well of the way to build fortune and exchange luck for fortune, instead.
[18] From the moment one takes on that Mind (of Original Heart and Zeal) to release the limitless realm of beings, with a resolve that cannot be turned back;
[19] From that moment on, though he may doze off or be distracted many times, uninterrupted streams of merit like the bursting sky continuously pour forth.
[21] Immeasurable merit took hold of the well-intentioned person who thought ‘Let me dispel the headaches of beings’.
[22] What then of the person who longs to remove the unequalled agony of every single being and make their virtue infinite?
[23] Whose mother of father ever has such a desire for their welfare as this, what deities or sages or Brahmas have it?
[24] Those beings did not conceive this desire before, even for their own sake, even in a dream. How could they have it for the sake of others?
[25] Such a being, unprecedented, an excellent jewel, in whom there is born a concern for the welfare of others such as others have not even for themselves, how is he born?
[26] That jewel, the Mind [the Awakening, Original Mind], which is the seed of pure happiness in the world and the remedy for the suffering of the world, how at all can its merit be measured?
[27] Worship of the Buddha is surpassed merely by the desire for the welfare of others; how much more so by the persistent effort for the complete happiness of every being? …
[32] People honor someone who gives alms to a few people, saying, “He does good’, because he contemptuously supports their life for half a day with a moment’s gift of more food.
[32] What then of the one who offers to a limitless number of beings, throughout limitless time, the fulfillment of all desires, unending until the end of the sky and those beings?
That ‘one’ is you, that ‘one’ me: Such is our great fortune and tomorrow’s bright fatherland.
