Banished from the Temple
By Sushant Shrestha
I climbed your mountain with bare feet and a heart full of surrender.
Each step a prayer, each breath an offering to your ancient wisdom.
The incense wrapped around me like a mother's embrace,
and I thought I had finally found home.
In your halls, I learned to quiet the storms of my mind.
My begging bowl filled daily with sutras and silence.
I bowed deeper than I knew possible,
let your traditions sculpt my days into perfect forms of devotion.
The mountain air thinned my blood,
until I thought I could touch enlightenment.
But something wild and untamed stirred in my depths.
A hunger that your ancient texts could not satisfy alone.
I began bringing back books from the valley,
words that spoke of bridges between worlds,
of integration vast as the sky.
Western wisdom that didn't negate your truths,
but expanded them like the universe itself expanding.
These new texts lay scattered among my prayer beads,
whispering of possibilities,
that made your temple walls seem suddenly narrow.
You found my foreign volumes and your faces darkened like clouds before storm.
"Choose," you said, your voices heavy with judgment.
"This path or that. There is no between."
But how does one choose between the inhale and the exhale?
Between the ground and the sky?
Between the ancient heart and the evolving mind?
The banishment came like winter - sudden and cold.
Now I walk these marketplace streets,
where neon lights compete with stars,
where sacred and profane dance without distinction.
My begging bowl lies shattered, but feeds a deeper thirst.
Some nights, I still smell your incense in my dreams,
my body aches for the certainty of your forms,Â
and the safety of your walls.
Yet here among the merchants and madmen,
I'm learning new mantras.
They rise from the clash of East and West,
from the holy ground where opposites meet.
No longer a mountain sage,
no longer the temple's chosen son,
just a bridge-builder walking territories,
where no paths yet exist.
Let others guard their pristine traditions,
like snow untouched by time.
I'll build my altar where the crossroads meet,
where all rivers learn to mingle their waters.
For what is enlightenment if it fears its own expansion?
What is wisdom if it cannot embrace its own evolution?
These streets have become my temple now,
Each step a sutra writing itself.
The marketplace holds its own koans:
How to be both mountain and valley?
How to honor stillnes of tradition while dancing with evolution?
How to have both roots and wings?
How to remain whole when cast out of wholeness?
Perhaps there is a greater dharma being born,
in these spaces between,
in the gulf between mountain top and marketplace,
between ancient and emerging,
between what was and what is becoming.
Here, banished from certainty,
I discover a truth vast enough to hold all truths.
Let me be the bridge,
though bridges must bear the weight of all crossings.
Let me be the question that makes room for all answers.
Let me be the exile who makes home in homelessness,
finding temple in temples' absence.