Poem: Second Coming; Anicca (Ajahn Chah)

Ajahn Chah; Wm. Yeats (poetryfoundation.org); Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats (PoemAnalysis.com)

.

Coming back to the middle

Yeats had an apocalyptic vision of our times

When we build a dam, we must build a spillway, too. Then when the water rises too high, it is able to flow off safely. When it's full to the brim, the spillway is opened. We have to have a safety valve like this.

Understanding impermanence (anicca) is the safety valve of the Noble Ones. If we also have this safety valve, we will also be at peace.

• Recollection reflecting on the Three Marks of Existence, which are that all conditioned things are impermanent (anicca), incapable of fulfilling (dukkha), and impersonal (anatta).
• Impermanence in Buddhism does not mean that all things will change but rather that all conditioned things are radically changing at every moment and submoment. They do not stand for two consecutive moments

POEM: "The Second Coming"

William Butler Yeats (Poetry Foundation)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

The falcon cannot hear the falconer (zeroanthropology.net)

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?