Arlene Corwin writes

Can One’s Meditations Influence The World?

   

Can meditations influence the world?

One daren’t respond

And waits for answers there unlearned;

Through insight, seen, the mystical - alone discerned.

A world? Much to insist upon?

There’s misery, the suffering, the evil, the corruption,

And we know that all that we can do is cure our selves.

Purify the flawed and imperfect-ed self

Whose weakness and shortcomings are hard to shelve.

Can little we, alone on cushion, chair or sofa

Offer up this blemished being 

To a seeing eye up in the sky

We well nigh can’t be sure of?

Breathing tricks, mantric techniques,

Sound and focusing and other tweaks - 

Can each ache jerk a world into a working peace?

Endeavours and experimenting reach long-term

Through  reaching in and out the brain?

One hopes.

We see a world that barely copes -

Whose future looks bleak, weak, with tweeting leaders, 

Cheeky citizens who leak the latest happenings.

Science tries. The churches try. Social-minded allies too. 

But here is little you, sitting as I’m doing now,

Pondering over  ‘if’ and ‘how’

Wondering if our meditations are a mediation 

Of conciliatory worth

And if they reach the big round earth

With leverage from this average me.

We’ll speculate a bit - and try, and see!

Meditation at the Table -- Yuri Sizonenko