The Lotus Sutra was spoken to express
The life that is best
That radiates from the mind of Buddha
That one can make as good a
Go of things even in dire circumstances
Rencho thought this was the one
After many years of study he’d done
And that if you chanted it’s title, it’s name
There was great benefit to gain
His point really was that Amida was mind control
Dressed up to effect fealty to the Emperor
It upset the balance of karma
Praying to Amida
Because it did nothing to challenge our inner greeds
Being only a diversion that corruption feeds
A population with placatory words
That doesn’t help the world
Never cries justice to evil
Is too afraid even
To think differently
Because yes the authorities would see
So Rencho spoke the mantra we can all know
Which is Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo
Or I devote myself to the mystic law of cause and effect
Sanscrit and Vedic
Effective in a jam. Chant it if you can
When they first heard him do this mantra
The abiding priests had a tantrum
You can’t do this here or anywhere they said
Some actually wanted him dead
But Rencho escaped and changed his name
To Sun Lotus, which is ‘Nichiren’
He went around telling people to have no doubt
This little mantra was what it was about
A direct spiritual assault on the authorities
Whose Gods probably started quaking at the knees
The rest of his life this is what he did teach
The rest of his life he vexed heavy duty control freaks
But then he had heavy duty followers
Like Shijo Kingo a full power Samuria Warrior
Who was a healer as well
Who would have followed Nichiren to hell
This was his sentiment one time
When Nichiren’s life was really on the line
There was a beheading block and his head was on it
When overhead flew this flaming great comet
That lit up the sky to make night into day
Most of the monks there ran away
Soldiers bold were stricken with fear
But there were some that went near
To Nichiren because they saw who he was
Perceived something different through the fog
Of misconceptions about a man
Whose concern was simply for the Land
To be free and the people happy
It still wasn’t evidently
Executions could not take place in the sun
The Sage ordered Sake for everyone
They could catch him but never kill him
This was some prophesy fulfilling
Nichiren’s major concern was the Mongol Invasion
He said it would come
And they would wipe out everyone
Unless Amida and others similar
Ceased to be the State Creed
But the Government would not heed
He said it once twice three times in remonstrance
Yet the Government didn’t give it a chance
To which the Great Sage Nichiren saw
That it would be less slander to the Mystic Law
They wouldn’t be around to make more bad causes
If they were cut to pieces by the Mongol forces
He was exiled, he’d said his piece
The Mongols came but had storms at sea
That smashed them to bits on the cliffs
The invasion wasn’t a great success
It was Kublai Khan who had sent them there
Wishing vengeance on Japan from earlier
But maybe they overstepped themselves
There was much infighting as well
Ghengis Khan’s Grandson of the Pleasure Dome
As his travelling canvas palace was well known
Somehow touchs all places with inspiration flowing
But that’s not the Mongols that is the poem
Kublai Khan that I learnt in school
When I first touched those waters cool
That inspiration rings true clear
Say in bardic notions when one hears
The motion of this water
In ones inner caves
The shadow of a dome of pleasure
Floating midway on the waves
And maybe it is flowing with pure Awen
To brighten up our days
Maybe just illusion
Idealistic vision
Maybe the start of
A lifelong mission
What is the portent of such mirages?
It depends on who the judge is
Could it have been that one time
Life was lived as sublime
Not to say it was Utopia
Perhaps a different view on fear
And Death that is ever near
Living lives not yet formed
The concept of separation from
You or me or anything
It depends who is judging
In the crystal clear water vision
Can we see a time beyond
Crass trickery of war?
Surely tribes always fought
To protect their own
This is what history has shown
‘It’s human nature and it will never change’
I’ve known people gruffly explain
My friends know that history lies
To big up the bad guys
Twist it round
Faerie heritage gone underground
It was no place to be a faerie
To live in the thirteenth century
Kublai Khan
He of indomitable command
Ghengis his Grandfather
Who couldn’t have been harder
Also saw I believe
Through a magic prism
His rare Pleasure Dome
Those caves of ice Coleridge had known
Nichiren the Sage
Shogunate Japan all in the same age
As my telling of Kings
Which should quite nicely bring
Us to Edward the Second
Speaking of faeries
I don’t mean to be unkind
But he didn’t fit the mould
Of his belligerent line
He was a homosexual
Of another mind
His late father must have been
Grave-raging in perpetual spin
Edward II was inept in war
It was not what he adored
The Barons were infuriated
With Edwards gifts to men he rated
Saught to keep this Prince of Wales in check
Before he all of England wrecked
One Piers Gaveston from Gascony
Had been kicked out already
By Edwards father but he got back
Was a wayward influence on the lad
And siphened off too much power
It made the Barons glower
His Magnate imposed restrictions
And quite happily banished wily Gaveston
Until the barons kicked off and had him killed
Edward agreeing to more terms was hardly thrilled
Thomas Earl of Lancaster
Was brought by the Magnate
To help with the State
The King had fallen in with another outsider
His name being Hugh Dispenser
And together they executed Lancaster
After the battle of Boroughbridge York
Hugh and Edward ruled but there were revolts
Many were beheaded or exiled
Making enemies all the while
Then in Gascony sent on a mission
Edwards wife had a frisson
With Roger Mortimer an expatriate Baron
They invade England put Edward in prison
The King is killed a poker up the bum
Mortimer is ruling on the Throne is Edwards son
Edward the Third seemed much a Kings King
Nothing peculiar about him
His wife Phillipa gave him lots of children
His sexuality in court was less bewildering
He could kill made lots of war
That’s what God put him there for
Crowned at fourteen
He killed Mortimer
And exiled his Mother
Assuming control of the Government
His was the Hundred years war with France
Edward spoke of Chivalric Romance
With reality far more distanced. Gruesome
Death-mongering would be more truthsome
With Baliol he did in the Scots
Scotland again England got
Lines and alliances went back and forth
Concerning territory and allegiances troth
A naval battle called Sluys then at Calais and Cresy
Got the English on French soil, it was messy
Then came the Black Plague
Bubonic infections of great blue-black buboes
You don’t want to get one of them you know
Contact that and your dead in three days
Which took half of the population away
And foreign hostilities subsided a bit
People were not able to manage it
Then with the Black Prince, Edward’s son
They went and trounced everyone
With a big army surrounding Paris
Till was signed a treaty of Peace
Conceding lands in Bretingny
To English Sovereignty
But it was soon lost again
In the hundred years war game
A slow formation of history
Is what we see here
England’s moulding by the greedy
Yet also pressures of the times
The Merchant class was rising
Making money not surprising
From wool off of the backs
Of the poor peasants sheep
Merchants could speak in parliament
You can see that this meant
The poorer folk were spoken for
Not permitted in the door
The Feudal world was passing
The Merchant class was in
Meaning there were fewer landed barons
Now it was taxes of export and commerce not land
That fed the Royal purse a plenty
Which could then stretch to mercenaries
Replacing the vassals obligation of before
Treason was defined by statute of law
French ceased to be the tongue
That was spoken in Court
Sheriffs were given appointments
This was all done in Parliament
John of Gaunt had failed in France
The Plague had struck hard economic advance
Not everything was rosy
In the Court of Edward Three
John Wycliff made ecclesiastic reform
On Pope and Kings corrupt goings on
The Black Prince was ill
And Edward was dying
The Black Prince died
and Edward was crying
Too much tax had cost him the people’s faith
When his Mistress with William Chamberlain
And John of Gaunt
Ran the court in his dotage
They did things he didn’t notice
Edward ended his life feeling very bad
Was it punishment for the badness he had?
It was just after the Black Plague
There was all round reduced wages
But Parliament had not restricted prices
This of course had led to the Revolt
Richard the Second was the son of the Black Prince
And Joan the Fair Maid of Kent
What they say about his life is not
Nesicerily how it went
Made King at ten
He was fourteen when at Mile End
He met some people we now call peasants
With whom he agreed to concessions
They demanded he consent
Concerning certain ministers they did resent
Who had made their tax too steep
Risen from 4d to 12d
A levy of one fifteenth movable wealth
Was traditional and could be dealt
But this new tax was an unjust trickery
That and they were tired of villeiny
Contrary to the image that history gives us
It seems that these poor people were quite sussed
Were organised very well I have heard
From Essex and Kent to converge
In London with specific aims
To target those that from them gained
The exorbitant tax that was so hated
It seems that the authorities had not rated
Them with intelligence to take action
And were not fully prepared in reaction
(Though they knew how to deal with any rebel
The revolt didn’t take too long for them to quell)
The radical priest John Ball
Had made a sermon to them all
At Blackheath where his famous speech began
"When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?"
He meant that when God the world began
He put no chains on man and woman
Implying that no man should be enslaved
A message that still echoes these days
This was spoken to the men of Kent
Whom Wat Tyler did represent
Over the London Bridge they marched
Into the cities very heart
Another leader, Jack Straw
Meanwhile brought many more
In from Essex way
They arrived at Stepney
And burnt the Savoy Palace of John Gaunt
Along with properties of the Knight’s Hospitalier Order
But it was all to do with targetting
Those who the hated tax had helped to bring
On the people disproportionate to their income
Yet this was not wanton violence they had done
But specific acts with particular aims
To stop the unjust unfair gain
Of ministers who an advantage used
With the King being such a youth
The people destroyed such records
Pertaining to the taxing they deplored
And this shows that some were literate
A fact that history tends not to iterate
Some people stormed the Tower of London
And there were several executions
Of prominent government ministers
Who had this tax administered
Such as Lord Chancellor Simon of Sudbury,
Archbishop of Canterbury
And Robert de Hales
Grande Prior of the Knight’s Hospitaliery
Both who met their end quite quickly
Richard had audience with the people
They wanted a King and they wanted Him
They thought him innocent which is believable
And he seemed to find their demands reasonable
For he bade that every one be pardoned
Not that he kept his side of the bargain
At Smithfield they all met again
Where Walter Tyler further proclaimed
Demands that no man be chained
By villeany or serfdom
There should be one King whose name was not John
The Church own no land and it’s authority gone
That the same be true of the Nobles
That they just handed their property over
And that there should be but one law
That being the Common Law of Winchester
It was better One King over all commanding
Than scores of Barons all squabbles and bickering
Tyler is said to have gone to parley
With the King and his Party but there was a fray
Out of the Common Peoples sight
So the version we hear is from only one side
Wat Tyler we are made to believe
To King Richard behaved discourteously
Grabbing him and drinking a pitcher of water so rudely
That Mayor Walworth killed Wat to reproove him
Richard rode out and addressed the nervy crowds
Though very young he was good at speaking out loud
Lying to them that Tyler had been made a Knight
That they should simply go home it was all alright
Yet in a fortnight the instigators were tracked
And under torture perhaps on a rack
Jack Straw confessed the names of revolutionaries
They were found and it didn’t help him any
He was killed and John Ball and more
It was a job for the executioner
Richard or his ministers revoked their reforms
And everything went on much as before
The tax was back
The poor still lacked
Perhaps they had been inspired to react
By reading or hearing the bardic tract
Of just published Piers Ploughman
And his Pilgrims Progress
Which spoke to the reality of their life’s stress
Which with other emerging troubadour tales
Blew around Europe senses to regale
With imaginings beyond what had been before
Opening up a new life’s door
The Limousin Troubadour Bertran de Boron
Had been bored
Back at the start of the Plantegenet Court
Hearing endless tales gory and violent
He thought it boorish and must have made comment
Henry the Seconds idea of high art
Was a leap a whistle and a fart
Such level of accomplishment
Thought this de Boron it is evident
Would be quite an embarrassment
In the Courts he had been
Which appealed to the Queen
Eleanor of Aquitaine surely knew what he meant
For she with troubadours her youth had spent
Her Grandfather had been Duke William the Ninth
The Count of Poitiers who had spent much of his time
Womanising in far lands of Crusade
And learning the songs of the age
Passing them on or making them new
And he was considered quite risque too
He composed love songs to women who were married
Which technically with it the death sentence carried
But it all helped to loosen things up
And Eleanor as I poeticised brought the cup
Of the Grail in tales passed down
Through her the line of troubadour found
To hear of that Grail that Percival achieved
Such a story to believe!
That Cretain de Troyes and Wolfram von Essenbach
Would also have tracked
Slowly filling the ears and minds of folk
Stories written with an imagination to evoke
Ethical and spiritual codes
Feelings suggest in a modern mode
To teach it and enrich daily life
To help people through their plight
And bring in new frames of mind
From the Eastern lands sublime
Which had a very big impact
To a boorish country that
Was not quite so far advanced as it thought
Inside a small and violent mind set caught
The tenets of Courtly Love
Were taught at Eleanor’s behest
And they stood the test
Of time through violent ages
With another form of persuasion
The world of Courtesans
Who diplomatically understand
Their role where marriage can cause
Both friendship and wars
By the time of Richard the Second
These ideas were well reckoned
And it is said he ran his Court
With a great deal of these thoughts
Terry Jones has said that there was magic
Too bad his ending was tragic
He was misrepresented by history he argues
I’ve heard it said how unpopular he was
But the fact he was topped was a loss
Maybe I can give Richard some dues
And say his court was refined
And he wasn’t out of his mind.
It was Bollingbroke, his cousin
Who gave him that reputation
Richard had given too much
To favorites he unwisely trusted
Michael de la Pole, Robert de Vere and others
Who with Thomas Duke of Gloucester
Formed the Lord’s Appellant
Who tried and convicted five of Richard the Second’s
Closest advisors. For this the King made parliament
Execute three Lords and give two banishment
But when Richard went to quell an Irish rebellion
One of the Lords returned to be crowned by parliamentary concession
This was Bollingbroke I should mention
Richard on return had no support and was imprisoned
He was killed of course
First casualty in the Wars
Of the Roses caught
Between the houses of Lancaster and York
Since the time of Edward the Third
As you have briefly heard
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