Living in strife was not my life
At the very worst I didn’t receive the tea timely
My father feared the outside, the obvious strife
So he hid me away from the world, it was ugly
My father thought I’d be a better heir to the throne
Especially if I couldn’t see the woes and problems outside
But as I grew up, these, notions of being stuck in the palace
Are a notion that I decided that were broken and thrown.
Late in the evenings I sneak out of the palace
Not for a tryst with the world, but just to see
But it simply wasn’t what I could of imagined, this place
So many hungry people, death, disease, nothing serene
Men sit on the side of streets, hands outstretched
Women seemingly wait until a man gives her money and away they go
Men chopping wood until their backs became wretched
And moreso with the men and women in the fields, as they dig on their hoes
The world made me feel awful, constant struggles to stay alive and earn a wage
“Have I really been living in this world all this time” I asked himself.
But indeed that was the case, I was entombed, so I decided it was time to change
How would being pampered help me to understand the world itself?
I donned some humble garbs and I sat on the street and suffered.
Such as many I saw had done before, though to start with I was obviously new to this.
But I continued and my father never found me, his rage unbuffered
Despite this, I moved away to smaller towns and villages, other leisures I’d miss
Hardship was my way to understand how the world worked
And in my time I developed various mantra and the philosophies
Humbleness became achieved goal, from princed to vagrant, unperked
And I planned to show the world my ideas, but not as trophies
So I sat under a tree for 42 days, meditating and fasting
And I saw the world through another method, enough to make others laugh perhaps, ha.
I learnt much, but I will not keep this poem lasting
My name is Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as Buddha
I love this Nathan, when I started reading it I thought that’s exactly how every parent feels with their children, wanting to protect them from the world….then you switched over to the metaphysical bio-spiritual, a different take completely – a glimpse to the reader that we are the creators of all this so we could also create the ectasy too – also reminds me a little bit of the song by the waterboys – ‘the whole of the moon’…