Have you ever seen a man,
who never wanted a thing?

Have you ever seen a child
who was born being mean?

Have you seen a woman
deprived of her emotions?

Have you ever seen a priest
letting go of his devotions?

Oh Yes, I have seen
and many of them,

But I have also seen
A man under a tree,

At the eye of a storm,
Stinging like a bee

His body was bleeding
but he held a smile,

He accepted whatever came
but he never looked guile,

For a moment I was lost
I experienced the true calm

For I had myself, become,
the Buddha in a storm!

The buddha in a storm is an image that I hold in my head, whenever I am going through a tough situation. I imagine myself in the middle of a brutal storm, so fierce and so alive that it could only end in two ways, me being annihilated or me becoming stronger than ever before.

Most of the time, I come out of the storm totally exhausted, totally torn to pieces, ready to patch up my life and relationships, but every time there is a storm in my head, I achieve a higher level of peace overcoming it.

It is like training, a practice session to become mentally stronger by facing challenges head-on. I believe that we all are the “Buddha in a storm” going through our own set of challenges and trying to making things work in our own capacities.

I also understand that the struggle that we all go through is more internal than external, most of the challenges take birth and are conquered within our heads, their physical existence is meaningless. Only, if we can attain a sense of perpetual peace and calm, we will be able to attain true happiness, is what we all think.

but the point is not to be calm and composed all the time, but to be in control of our own emotions, our mind is like an elastic rubber, if you keep stretching it, it will break, if you will keep it stretched for a very long time, it will deform in shape and become loose. but if you stretch it and then release it, it will come back to its natural and original shape in a few moments.

We all need to treat our minds as the rubber, whenever we undergo an overwhelming situation, we all just need to remember that it is not the natural state of our existence and that we need to get back to our original shape, only doing just that will help us all be happier, more calm and maybe perpetually satisfied in a way.

-Vivek Tiwari