The original Therigatha (“Verses of the Elder Nuns”) contains the poems of the first Buddhist nuns. In her Foreword to Matty Weingast’s intuitive renderings in The First Free Women, Bhikkuni Anandabodhi writes that these poems are like jewels. “They call us to remember our greatest potential – our potential to be free.”
Poem: AN OTHER UTTAMA
During our What is my path? gathering, we read one of these poems: An other Uttama. It reads as follows:
"The entire Path,
and all you will ever need
to walk it,
you will find inside.
So the Buddha taught me.
Once I took a closer look,
all the running around
started to seem a little silly.
Things changed so quickly –
by the time I got anywhere,
I'd be someone else.
You are your mother.
You are your daughter.
One
moment
gives birth
to the
next.
What we do is who we become."
Contemplation
The poem, as Bhikkuni Anandabodhi already wrote in her Foreword, touched the hearts of all joining our gathering on this new moon (March 19, 2026). At times, some notes, we feel lost or not quite sure where to go next. How do we discover where to go from here? Where are we now to begin with? The poem points to something important: we need to do it ourselves.
The last line stroke a chord with many, and felt both true and somewhat uncomfortable: “What we do is who we become.” During our conversation, we wondered: Is it perhaps also how you do something and not only what? And maybe of even greater importance, some suggested, is why we do something!
Another topic that was highlighted, referring to the words right before the last line and two verses preceding it: change. Things never stay the same. On the one hand, some said, this can be quite challenging. On the other hand, it was suggested, this is actually liberating. It may be difficult to do things differently, yet change always offers us an opportunity to change for the better.
How, then, do we ensure we take a step in the right direction?
Dutch Translation of Poem
Below is an intuitive rendering of the poem from the English version by Matty Weingast into Dutch, written for the participants of our What is my path? bi-weekly gathering. I hope it will help the Dutch-speaking readers to connect with the meaning more easily. Please feel free to rewrite it such that it helps you to make a connection with this poem.
"Het gehele Pad,
en alles, wat je ooit nodig zult hebben,
om het te bewandelen,
vind je binnenin.
Aldus, zei de Boeddha tegen mij.
Toen ik er eens goed naar keek,
Al dat heen en weer geren
Begon te dagen als nogal onnozel.
Dingen veranderen zo snel –
Zodra ik ergens aankwam
Was ik alweer iemand anders.
Je bent je moeder.
Je bent je dochter.
Het ene
Moment
Leidt
Tot het volgende.
Wat we doen, bepaalt wie we worden."
Leave a Reply