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Bodhisattva is an unusual long poem by the Indian English poet and translator Tapan Kumar Pradhan on the theme of Gautama Buddha's attempts at nirvana or liberation through a succession of many births or incarnations. Pradhan won the Upasika Kamaladevi Prize for Buddhist Literature from the Mahabodhi Society for his essays based on the theme of ''Bodhisattava'' poem. The original poem in Oriya has a number of parts, each of which was published under different pseudonyms of the poet in various Oriya magazines during 1992 to 1993. The poem series was subsequently translated into English by the poet himself, and an abridged version was published in various journals, including the ''Journal of the Poetry Society''. ==Excerpts from the poem== It's the birds now chirping in the bowers of ''Jetavana'', guess, their rising cacophony's lost all meaning such meaning they had, I remember I was a child handsome young prince, used to sing to their tune : when I returned with my queen to watch'em make love secretly. That was but another day, another life, within this one life there've been so many lives, perhaps a thousand lives - how easily one forgets them though, ::: * * * * * How can I forget the One radiant with peace - In these very woods He had said ''Jetavana'' is full of wisdom, and so is the whole world full of knowledge. What you see is illusion, to see here truth you need only to renounce. ::: * * * * * And so I said no to my desires said "no" till woman's caresses troubled no more, neither pain nor passion, only the desire to be alive - I went to hamlets with a bowl, I fasted forty nine days to subdue this desire too; I had no more of it, only to be like Him ! Ah, only I had to wait - but, wait ''how many lives ?'' ::: * * * * * In a previous life I'd been a hangman too you hang the body - not the soul, Atman is Deathless, isn't it - ah, to be like Him !! ''But then .... how many lives?'' I was becoming so unlike everything that was not Him.... ::: * * * * * That night I went to the river's edge to watch the flames lap up the body of the young man, the father wept I told the mother, it is illusion ''I was becoming so unlike''... everything'd seemed so full of meaning when I had not learned to seek any meaning at all. ::: * * * * * * And how far I have come since the day I was a bird a mindlessly chirping bird before a thousand births long, long ago ? 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Boddhisattva (poem)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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