Happiness is being free…
Free to come
Free to go
Free to dream
Free to love
Free to sing
Free to create
Free to try
Free to fail
Free to belong
…and yet free to be.
Assert your freedom.
My City Has a Heart
My city has a heart you know
It holds my silences
It keeps my secrets
Its highways are my memory lanes
On them I travel back
To past moments…
To the smiles, kisses and tears
I left behind.
My city has a heart you know
I can feel its beat
Even as sirens and
Impatient drivers and busy people
With somewhere to go
And somewhere to be
Move on an endless loop
As if in a time-lapse video.
My city has a heart you know
Arterial to the highways
Forgotten, slow by-lanes
Await your return…
In my cab, the Bollywood film song
Strums our collective ache…
It touches a chord.
A tear drops.
Learn to Live
The problem with inertia
Is that there is no recourse
Life moves on…
Undeterred by your paralysis
You move with it-
A lifeless being.
It makes everything redundant
Relationships, emotions,
Celebrations, plans and projects
Life continues
It’s very hard to deal with
The fact that you don’t matter.
And yet here you are
In the grand scheme of things
Partial, but essential to the whole
To flow with life then
Must mean being
In a ‘whole’ new way.
Without contest,
Without ambition,
Without separation
Free of machinations
Reclaim your individuality
And fear not the future.
Don’t avoid the end
But embrace it
Keep your mind lean,
Attentive, responsive
Not loaded with
The unnecessary.
Travel lightly
There’s nothing to arrive to
Apart from the moment
Take away important lessons
From your state of inertia
Things will happen as they should.
Align yourself to life
Step away from ideas
Wake up
After enjoying your sleep
Know the difference
Between perception and reality.
From wherever you go to
Return…
Abide in a space
Where all life abides
In that space
Make your home.
Do You Have Any Idea?
Can you see that ideas
Make up our world?
Can you see that you have
The power to reject ideas…
To give them no attention?
Can you see that you can
Offer your own for every idea
That feels wrong, unjust and diminishing?
Give your ideas a voice,
Give them a shape, a form…
Give them expression.
Prepare them for the stage
That is life…
Create your own setting
Tell your own story…
But first live life well
Live fully. Expose yourself to
The world’s ideas
But neither borrow nor steal
You are the sovereign of your world
The centre around which
Your world revolves.
Live Like You Don’t Matter
Recognize that Who you call ‘I’ Is merely a consolidation of memories And a voice of hope. ‘I’ am but an idea Afraid of its flimsy reality. And so much this idea Has come to love life That now its biggest fear Is to be denied existence. ‘I’ is but a meaning Given to am-ness So that life can be lived As an ode to memory And romanced through Songs of love and hope. Your limitations belong to your façade And not to your essence. Live fearlessly. Live courageously. Live like you don’t matter.
Locked In
The time has come
To break away from habit.
Habits of thinking
And being and doing.
Our way of life
Was a roadmap of diversions;
We never really arrived anywhere
Except to where we began.
The search for validation
Was misconstrued as the search for self.
We have lived as partial beings
Unable to embrace a world of our making.
We speak, but don’t listen
We hurry, but to no specific destination.
Activity is valued as action
And in its chaos we seek our purpose.
How do we see our truth?
How do we integrate our being?
How do we come to see
That to be we must be free?
Our exchanges must be directed
To let go of a lesser value for a higher one.
Poverty does not belong to outer circumstances
But to an inner blindness that doesn’t let us see
That our wealth is as unreal
As our imagined poverty
Gain and loss are the way of life
It’s the alternating of breath that sustains life.
Freedom cannot be won in a world of perceptions.
We must stay silent, watchful and locked in.
Perfection is At Work
Things remain clean
When we persist
With the act of cleaning.
The action then,
Is more important
Than the state.
A state is indefinite
It can change or disappear
But the action must be consistent.
Persistence and perseverance
Are the only ways
To deal with entropy.
Action is the essence of life
To live , is to be
In an eternal relationship with perfection.
While you persistently act
To keep things in a state of perfection
Allow Perfection to act on you.
Life after all,
Is infinitely intelligent
And inherently perfect.
Disorder, disruption, chaos
Are surface disturbances…
Look deeper. Perfection is at work.
The New is Being Prepared; Be Prepared for the New
Are these testing times,
Or is this an Act of Providence?
We know what our losses are;
Will we be able to see our gains?
Or, will all questions
Of loss and gain lose relevance?
With the discovery of new values
Will old denominations vanish?
Will our houses now become homes;
Will our hearths now warm our hearts?
Will social distancing
Re-acquaint us with each other?
Will we learn in isolation
What good company is all about?
Will we remember over time
This spring that renewed us all?
Value is That Which Remains
To make,
To fashion is
To give appearance
To that which had existence
But not a life.
To make or fashion
A thing,
Is to simultaneously
Make or fashion
The maker.
The made
Is like the born
It will live amongst us
And alter our lives
In some or the other way.
The made
And the maker
Are of value
Not for the profits they supply
But for the stories they create.
Because when the made
And their makers are gone
All that is left behind
Is the memory
Of how things were.
Beauty Beholds
To see beauty
Is to awaken
To all that is.
Beauty is not
A matter of judgement
But of absorption.
After all,
You cannot seize something
That grips you.
In the presence of beauty
The mind is silenced;
At her altar, all the senses kneel.
You stand there-
Feeling privileged,
Feeling blessed.
She won’t be spoken to;
There’s nothing
That you can say to her.
Silence becomes
The expression of your awe
And wonder.
Your words
Can’t describe her
For she is pure essence.
Not this, not that
Not this way
Not that way.
She can’t be drawn
Or designed
Or sculpted.
You can find her
Only when
You are immersed in her.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 