Nirvana
The tears of Empathy
quench the thirsty stones
of the desolate mind
of the withered creature
called Loneliness.
Loneliness, hesitant,
starts to lick the saline liquid
First of the smallest pebbles
A droplet of Hope is seeping through
the cracked surface,
as suddenly Greed arrives
Greed overwhelms Loneliness,
makes its fibers swell
until they explode
Pleasant streams
of comforting Silence mingled
with calm Serenity
Ending in a total Nothing
NIRVANA
Loneliness -- Gabrielle Gaulin
Greed -- Gabrielle Gaulin
"Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness, except greed." -- Thomas Harris, "The Silence of the Lambs"
"Nirvan" is Sanskrit for "blown out," as in a candle or oil lamp. It is the state of perfect quietude, freedom, and highest happiness, the liberation from samsara (the repeating cycle of birth, life, suffering, and death). In Hindu philosophy it is the union of (or the realization of) the identity of Atman (soul, inner self, first principle, the essence of an individual) with Brahman (the transcendant self, the ultimate reality, the highest universal principle that binds the entire universe). In this sense the word did not appear in the early Vedic texts or Upanishads, though the concept was present. The Buddhist were apparently the 1st to apply the word to the pronciple. Atman and Brahma were routinely associated with positive images of fire, and thus "nirvana" became the extinguishing of the 3 fires that cause rebirth and suffering (ignorance, aversion, and greed). The "Bhagavad Gita," which post-dated the arrival of Buddhism, borrowed the term but applied it differently. Instead of representing the cessation of being it indicates cosmic awareness.
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