I wrote Buddha Laughing around 2010. It was a period in my life where I was extremely busy trying to run a nonprofit business. But I managed to carve out a little time each day to meditate, a little time to “become the Buddha.”
I am not a Buddhist, but as a poet I can see that there is metaphor running through the entirety of this religion.
Being the Buddha is a state of mind, a time in consciousness to say “time out” and the rest of the world doesn’t matter. I do not worship Buddha statuary, but I have a Buddha statue. My grandmother, a devout Seventh Day Adventist had one.
I look at the Buddha smile, the aura, the closed eyes and tell myself that is what I want to experience.
In my poem Buddha Laughing I take things to extremes to make a point, that when you become the Buddha, you are metaphorically dying from your normal life. As Alan Watts puts it:
“So a Buddha means somebody who has woken up and discovered that running around this thing may be fun, and it may be good to run around, but if you think you’re going to get something out of it, you’re under illusion. Because you’re forever the donkey with a carrot suspended from his own halter.”
