Of Yet
An acrostic senryu inspired by jules’s prompt
Yesterday I was Everlasting soul I am Today I can change
Jules’s prompt from:
Take a negative self-talk phrase or old story & add the word YET
Rather than directly follow the prompt, which has been in the back of my mind, my acrostic senryu emerged.
I often call what I should call senryu, haiku. The structure is the same. The difference is the subject matter.
One of the first full-length essays I wrote for publication on Medium (published in KTHT on 12/03/2020), is this essay
that called BS on a writer at The Forge who, even though I knew and still know little or nothing about Buddhist double-speak, clearly doesn’t know his ass from his elbow and was trying to clickbait off the deserved popularity of Michelle Obama (see his article here)
Cody Delistraty writes in Finding Yourself is Overrated:
“The ‘self’ is often thought of as a fixed and discrete entity, like a soul, but psychology research points to a different conception of the self, something more akin to an evolving, changing series of selves — “a bundle of selves,” as the 18th-century philosopher David Hume presciently called it.
…
One of the most ancient rejections of the self is the Buddhist doctrine of anatta — the belief that there is no self, or soul, or other permanent essence of who we are.
I wrote:
Souls are discrete entities; Souls are eternal. Eternal does not imply unchanging. A soul is a sentient being comprised of pure energy of a form and with properties beyond our understanding of energy (“Soul Energy”); it does not dissipate; it does not require a material vessel to encapsulate it; though when incarnate it resides in the brain once formation begins. Soul Energy provides the spark that ignites cell division in the zygote.
With all due respect to that esteemed journalist [from the Wall Street Journal] and The Forge, he misunderstands the Buddhist belief.
I have reviewed several definitions of “soul” in preparation for this essay and none imply unchanging personality traits. That inference is misplaced and, frankly, illogical. Buddhism teaches that there is after-life and reincarnation. Thus, Buddhism does teach that there is an eternal soul once soul is properly defined.
In Rama I create, with soul-energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,
