AI

by Tricia Knoll

“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.” —Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas

Under a roof of paper lanterns strung across Jogye Temple in downtown Seoul, a group of monks from the Jogye Order, Korea's largest Buddhist sect, sat across from a postulant awaiting a precept ceremony—except that postulant was the country's first humanoid robot to take part in the ritual. —The Korea Times, May 6, 2026

Summon billionaires. Lawmakers. Researchers. Have they felt confusion?  Must I warn the senior in memory care that her lovey robot dog may not really love her when her son is grateful it does not poop on her rug. Or should I thank the robots diving in Antarctica to assess the salinity, churn, and effect of wind on disappearing sea ice., those that replace cement on the ocean floor to encourage coral building. Or the one that assists in gall bladder surgery. Do I bow beside Gabi, the robot at the South Korean Buddhist Temple, who takes his vows wearing red robes among the hanging lanterns at his initiation ceremony. Asimov’s Zeroth law, the one that says the robot may not harm humanity. Who foresees all hues of harm? The Pope? The head of cultural affairs for Gabi’s order? What hand or eye guides the robot in the war machine?  In confusion, I am not alone. What robot holds my hand? With whom do I pray? 

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who lives in the woods. She read Asimov a lot many decades ago.

HOMELESS

by John Valentine

Dharmik Vibes

What is madness but nobility of soul
at odds with circumstance?
—Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time” 


At home once in the universe,
the old physicist
used to weave theories of everything
in the cat’s cradle
of his mind. How orderly the atoms
danced, how fleeting the
half-life of years. Wrapped now in rags,
his words spoken
only to the wind, he signs the language
of loss, hands tangled
in mudras, like a manic Buddhist, or an
operator at the
switchboard of chaos, pulling wires,
answering calls,
frantically making connections on the
streets
of the fallen.

John Valentine is a retired philosophy teacher living in Savannah, Georgia.

LAMENT FOR THE TIMES

by Ann Grogan

after George Eliot, “The Choir Invisible” and William Henry Channing, “My Symphony”

Primitives by Kathy

George Eliot prayed that she reach
the purest heaven;
be the cup of strength to those in agony.
I cannot seem to save myself.

I pray only to survive while
grasping at the crumbling edges 
of a giant hole into which I fall.
I cannot seem to save myself.

I try to smile, try to join in,
feed pure love, ignore the vile,
turn the world back to being kind.
I cannot seem to find the time.

What sweet luxury Channing had,
to advise we “bear all cheerfully… 
await occasions, hurry never.”
I cannot seem to find the time.

I don’t want to live in a world
where immigrants are not respected
or given dignity. 
And yet it seems I do.

I don’t want to live in a world
where women bleed out in cars because
craven doctors betray oaths to care for us.
And yet it seems I do.

Better Buddhist than bleary-eyed,
refusing the light that drives me on
to cry for help as we drown.
I cannot seem to find the light.

I try the common, I try the quiet,
I try to listen then to sing,
but stars refuse to shine on me.
I cannot seem to find the light.

Ann Grogan is a joyful octogenarian, retired lawyer, and emerging poet who lives in San Francisco, CA. Her writing promotes the unequivocal permission to pursue one’s passions at any age. Her poems have appeared in Little Old Lady, The Prairie Review, Querencia, the University of Vermont’s Continuing Education Newsletter, and on KAWL Public Media “Bay Poets”, and is forthcoming in Amethyst Review. She’s the author of two volumes of poetry, Poetic Musings on Pianos, Music & Life. Her music and poetry website is rhapsodydmb.com.

AS GANDHI LAY DYING

by Gil Hoy

The world’s biggest democracy and second-biggest country has a new leader, and he’s a controversial one: Narendra Modi, the head of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, and the longtime chief minister of Gujarat, a state in the northwest of India . . . who will forever be associated with the 2002 riots in Gujarat that left more than a thousand people dead, most of them Muslims . . .
--John Cassidy, The New Yorker, May 16, 2014

As Gandhi awaited
Yama’s final curtain call                                                                                                                                                                                      
In a makeshift camp
atop a rocky cliff,
a city ablaze below,
also dying--halved,
Mangala ruling
                                                                                
club carryin’ zealots,
maggot-infested
red bloody meat,
brick throwing
heathens, the rabid
sweaty-toothed 
wolf everywhere

With wasting body,
his wrinkled bald
head propped up
by a pillow on a
thatched basket
bed, only a loincloth
for modesty,

encircled by his
family of white-robed
turban priests,
true believers every
one of them.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
No solid food for
days, now weeks
grueling times for
the ephemeral flesh              
                                                                                                                                                                    A mortal, dirt-of-the-
earth skin shell wastes
and withers away then
when punished so,
but the eternal spirit
mind--just the opposite--
may tap into that
wellspring of God’s
Biblical enoblement

A fiercely burning
kind wisdom found
by Gandhi in his pain
nearing death, both
rational and spiritual,
with unyielding
definiteness of purpose

a spark becomes a
flame, then a focused
laser inferno, an
awakening worth
paining for--

But no mere mortal
anyway could have
stopped Gandhi by
then from completing
his snowball-rolling-
down-a-hill-momentum
spirit journey.                                                                                                                                                                                
A wild-eyed shirtless lost
Hindu advanced upon the
camp, mumbling
                                                                               
frightened the turbaned
priests, his face-dripping
with sweat,  a hateful
sour heart in his hairy
chest, but raised bread
in his soiled hands:

“Eat this, my body
I will not let you die   
                                                                                       
my soul already wine,
soaked by the spilled
blood  from the
fresh brains of a
young Muslim girl,

no more than a loaf of
bread long, her skull
bashed in against
a red brick city wall

For I saw the Muslims
murder my family,
my wife and only
one angel child              

I was filled with so much
burning hatred then
and smoldering now

What can I do Siddhartha
to be saved?”
                                              
Gandhi, shaky from
the fast and his journey,
soft-spoken, but
Buddhist marine firm:
                                                           
“Why did you do that
my son?

I know your path
to salvation, it
can be done,

look hard within
our sick broken city,
find a homeless
innocent baby girl,

no more than
a loaf of bread
long, whose parents
have been murdered,
their brains bashed
in against the city’s
blood-stained walls

take the child in
to your home and
nurture her, make
the growing child
strong, with love
in her heart,

go now—for you must
faithfully raise her
as your only child.”
                                                                                       
The Hindu had listened
very carefully, he knew
just what to do

as he was preparing
to leave, just one more
lightening bolt instruction:                                                                                                                                                                   
“But most important
of all, your only daughter
Must be a Muslim, and
you must Raise Her as One.”                                                                                                                                                                                             
For an eternity moment,
the Hindu man’s

racing eyes
were set to
explode, jagged red
lightening against
white sky, his heart
pounded and his
body trembled

But then something
strange, curious
and magical:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
an aware heap
of knowing spirit
collapsed on
mortal knees,
waterfall tears.

“Thank you, my
wise forgiving God,”
came from the core

of a saved soul that had been
cleansed by pain
of the pettiness
on this earth, its
madness assuaged
by eternal spirit
and divine reason.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Gil Hoy received a B.A in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Gil also is an elected member of the Brookline, MA Democratic Town Committee, and served as a Brookline, MA Selectman for 12 years. Gil studied poetry at Boston University, and started writing his own poetry in February of this year. His first poem “When Doctor Death Calls” was published in Volume #47 of Soul Fountain, and “An Unjust Law” was  published in April in The New Verse News.  “Ode to Sisyphus” was just selected for the April/May/June 2014 edition of The Story Teller Magazine. Gil is married, with three children, and lives in Brookline, MA.

UNTHINKABLE

by Ed Bennett





COLLEGE PARK, Maryland (Reuters) May 7, 2013 – Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tuesday decried Buddhist monks’ attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, saying killing in the name of religion was “unthinkable”.

East and West,
different in temperament
and religious thought
yet closer than imagined,
Enlightened One.

We bear the stink
of murdered saviors in
our advanced Western tribes;
our savagery worshiped
as an act of commemoration
that leaps from holy texts
to pretexts for slaughter
in the name of an abandoned God.

Good and Evil
wrap their tendrils
at each other’s throat and fist
so say your Wrathful Budhisattvas

and now your children bring fire,
bring wrath to every infidel
as a liberation for their soul.
It is, Enlightened One, eminently thinkable
when night obscures starlight
and flames quench the darkness.
One must consider the unspoken precept:
human nature trumps a tranquil soul.


Ed Bennett is a poet and reviewer living in Las Vegas, NV. His works have appeared in The Externalist, Touch: The Journal of Healing, The Lavender Review, Quill and Parchment and Lilipo. He is a staff editor for Quill and Parchment Magazine, the recipient of a Pushcart Nomination and the author of “A Transit of Venus”.

TOLERANCE PERCHANCE

by The Bangkok Bards
Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

    ACCEPTANCE
Buddhists Christians Hindus Jews Muslims
Believe in compassionate multiversity values
Humility kindness dignity mutual respect
Civilized compromises agreeing to disagree

BALANCE
Same-same yet somehow different
Seen through refocused laser gaze
Cherish our commonalities honor discrepancies
Superiority complexes falling through cracks

ENDURANCE
Religions teach empathy not enmity
Universal red blood donor brotherhood
Imperfect beings inhabiting peaceful planet
Sacred principles uncovered deep within

FORBEARANCE
Education learning life-altering lessons
One’s enemy the best teacher
Common sense accepting forgiveness as
Rare as quality of mercy

SUFFERANCE
True lie lovers worshiping freedoms
Telescopic visionaries modifying radical approaches
Irrespective of perverse background perspectives
Matter-of-fact conscience conviction not convenience

REASSURANCE
Acknowledging disowned zero level tolerance
Bent on hateful fear violence
Distorted mirror image shattered stereotypes
Up-tight bigoted assholes prejudicing mindsets

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .