Even though
I tended to my plants
With unfailing care
They still withered
And died
Too soon.
Nevertheless
New life sprouted quickly and
Once again life bloomed.
Death, I learned
Is not the end of life
But its release.
So, mourn not my end
For what will end
Was never life.
A wise soul once said:
“You’re never more alive
Than when you’re dead.”
The world’s events reported
In black and white
Text
Yesterday’s stories recounted
With supporting images
All designed to make a claim
Over a reality
Apparently experienced
By ‘those’ and ‘them’.
How depraved, defeated
And devastated is our world
It seems…
Reality exits when
Imagination comes to play
I can’t tell anymore
If what I call reality
Is a construct of my
Perverted imagination.
I wonder if I should
Be feeling guilty or foolish
For being the proverbial human
Enjoying the cherry blossoms of the tree
On whose branch I hang precariously
Suspended between imminent death
But ah! This moment is a gift…
Alas! The newspapers will not talk about
That which is not yet an event.
A crisis threatens you
With loss…
A loss of meaning and purpose;
Or with a loss of resources
And reserves.
A crisis reminds you
That life comes with no guarantees
That to live means to incur debt
That must be repaid
To all that sustains, nourishes and protects you.
A crisis teaches you
To live with deference
To wait and to be grateful
To effectively transact the business of life
By refusing to bank on it.
A crisis inaugurates
Your liberation
From the smallness of certainties
To a realm of possibility
A crisis is a time to live consciously.
A crisis conveys you
From the narrow alleys of fear
To the vast open skies of promise
You renew your relationship
With trust and faith.
A crisis is integral
To the design of humanity.
It reminds us that to simply be
One need not be accomplished
Just alive and inspired.
Growth is not in itself a virtue
And to seek it for its own sake
Is to have misunderstood its purpose.
We grow in and through
Movements that yield self-discovery,
Realization… a deeper seeing.
True growth is a natural process
Not a simulated artifice
It’s not a measure on a scale.
Leave things alone;
Let them simply be-
Immersed in time and space.
Allow them their abrasions
Allow them their struggles
Allow them their fight to be.
Growth is not merely expansion;
At its heart
It’s a search for possibility.
Roads, streets and street corners
Are so much more
Than an urban infrastructure…
They are keepers of time-
The interstices of our destinies;
They convey us from the past
To the present and from here
To the future.
Who knew then
That the street corners
Where we hung around
On lazy, bright afternoons
And warm, dusky evenings
Would echo their laughter
Far into a future
That is today.
The street-corner musings
On life, its irony and love
Continuing, despite distances
And disagreeing time zones;
When your day is my night
And my night is your day…
Yet we continue to chat on WhatsApp
As though we’re hanging around the corner.
Or the long drives that began
In the spring of 1991-travelled far…
Shared moments grew into a shared life.
These roads allowed us
To meander aimlessly
To simply revel in being together
Or to meet secretly- anywhere apart
From the places we were outgrowing.
On these very streets
We imagined a life of our dreams
In its tiny establishments we worked,
Positing our hopes for a larger life
A bigger future…
Not knowing then that in the future
That is today
We would come to miss terribly
Those roads, streets and street corners
Where we simply hung around.
Time is His Will
Time is His Gift
Time is Our Being
To be is to be
In sync with time.
Following its cue
Matching its step…
True morality is not a resistance
It demands a dissolution of individuality
Dissolve into the moment…
Let it consume you
From the standpoint of the highest peak
Our polarities disappear
When all is good
So is the bad; the evil.
Be willing to be destroyed
Be bold enough to destroy
Experience everything-
Joy and happiness
Sorrow and bitterness.
Feel your sadness
But do not become sad
Feel your pain
But do not become miserable
Just be; don’t become.
There’s nothing to be gained from the world
There’s nothing that the world
Can take away from you
If only you don’t insist on being
What you’ve now become.
So, tell me…
What you are feeling
What you’re struggling with
So, tell me
How are you?
The counsel of thought
Has its limitations
Its resources are often inadequate
Where then do you find a way?
Where do you find an exit?
Adjacent to thought is a questioning mind
When the heart soars to an unknown
And unseen power…
This power offers no counsel
Other than its silence.
In its silence, we can hear ourselves
In its silence, we find no answers
In its silence, the mind ceases to question
In its silence, we stand absolved.
Things are as ordinary
Or extraordinary
As our faith makes them.
Man without faith
Is a corpse-
Dead to all that
Is alive around him.
He’s unable to see
Beauty, truth and possibility…
And the providence
That is packaged in the smallest gesture.
What conveys our actions?
Wherefrom our words arrive?
What is the origin of our thoughts?
On whose estate is our inner life being lived?
(It should be our own).
We may move about aimlessly…
But thanklessly and without promise-
Now that is to be rudderless.
Your faith is the ground on which you stand
It is the basis of your being
The purpose by which you live.
Why do you wish
For things to be different…
Better…?
Effort. Accomplishment. Success-
What if you’ve got it
All wrong?
Dissatisfaction, it is said,
Drives progress; it advances us…
But towards what?
The trajectory of progress
Is not a line, it’s a circle.
You come back to where you started.
You wonder…
What was the point
Of your heroism, your battles?
Whom were you fighting?
Why does your victory
Feel like a defeat?
The world has nothing to offer
Your strategies, your goals
Are aimed at the illusory.
The world will neither make
Nor protect you.
It is you who will come to shape it.
To feel diminished by the world
Is to be ignorant
Of your own vastness.
It is to have carried with you
A false knowledge
Based on your ignorance.
Break away from the shackles of thought
And see that your seeing
And know that your knowing
Is that which gives
Contour, purpose and spin
To the world that inhabits you.
In polarities we seek
Our certainties
We feel that knowledge
Refers to a position
We must occupy.
But knowing is an action
Involving, first and foremost
An arrival to a no-man’s land
Standing in the field of uncertainty
Belonging to nothing
And no one in particular…
Standing on a piece of ground
Solid enough to hold
The weight of your being.
You listen…
Because you know
You know nothing
You receive
Because you’re asking.
The fact of the matter is
That our ignorance
Is vaster than anything
We’ve come to know
And so will it always be.
So fundamental
Is ignorance to our beings
That it thinks
That knowledge must be an acquisition
A position…a rank…an accomplishment.
Something it can use
To decorate itself.
The irony is-
The more you claim to know
The less you do.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 