Sakshi Bhavan, the dispassionate witness, giving feelings one’s full attention without allowing rumination that compounds the effect.
Not technically a strategy, but I think it’s on point.
PROMPT: Negative Feelings
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Category Archives: Philosophy
PROMPT: Superstitious
Nah. I’d say I’m normal-stitious, possibly even substitious.
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Illusory [Free Verse]
Nothing is what it seems,
or as it feels it should be.
The world is full of
smoke & mirrors --
neither here nor there...
And yet everywhere...
& everywhen.
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Vagabond [Lyric]
![Photograph of a statue of a young vagabond taken at Fo Guang Shan [佛光山,] near Kaohsiung, Taiwan.](https://berniegourley.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/img_0378.jpg)
Each Soul contains its Vagabond
- Who yearns to travel light & free -
But they load too much baggage on,
Then tether him to a big tree.
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Nameless / 无名 [Lyric Poem]
![Photograph taken in Hualien, Taiwan at the Hualien Temple and Dongjing Temple (花蓮寺東淨寺) [Buddhist.]](https://berniegourley.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/img_1218.jpg)
They call me Nameless,
Well-known as fameless.
My plans are aimless.
My faults are blameless.
My chess is gameless.
My disgrace, shameless?
But my glasses are framed.
My passions are inflamed.
My wild horses are tamed,
And my arrows are aimed.
All due credit is claimed,
And nothing else remains.
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PROMPT: Fate/Destiny
I don’t believe. I don’t disbelieve. I have insufficient data on which to draw a conclusion.
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PROMPT: Biggest Challenge
Daily writing prompt
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?
I certainly have my ideas, but I’m not going to jinx it or create a self-fulfilling prophecy on the matter. Sometimes the easy is hard and the hard comes easy, and — above all — people suck at making predictions (except in the case of self-fulfilling prophesies.)
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PROMPT: Teenage Self
Be your authentic self.
And stop touching yourself so much.
But the first advice wouldn’t be understood, and the second would be ignored, so I’m not sure that it would be a productive undertaking.
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DAILY PHOTO: Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple
PROMPT: Patriotic
I am. I wish my country the best, am pained to see ailments of what have always been the country’s greatest strengths (the government being limited and at the command of the people and the law [rather than the other way around] and the courage to boldly lead by building the new technologies and adapting to the world that came to be,) and will not stop bitching about it unless and until the situation rights itself. When I was a young man, I served in the military and waved flags. Now, as an old man, I’m not eager to see America go gently into that good night.
I realize that may sound excessively Pollyanna about America’s past and pessimistic about the present / future. I do realize that the country has always had its flaws, as humanity always does. (And loved it all the same.) There have been missteps and mass movements that would later come to be viewed as wrongheaded and self-defeating. But we always had checks and balances, an Enlightenment norm for tolerance, and a respect for decorum and gravitas in our leaders. Now, as I see the “Putin-Orban Manual for New Populist-Nationalist Dictators” being played out, I wonder if the shark hasn’t been jumped on all that was good, honorable, and impressive in the America in which I grew up.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 