Simply being
Who, or rather
What is the Other?
Your hope? Your helplessness?
Your expectation? Your indifference?
Your need for control?
Or that which you hate?
Or that which you fear?
Or, a target for your anger?
You exist in a vacuum.
Your chronic need to be someone
Creates the Other
–The matter to your anti-matter.
They are what they are
Because of what you wish to be
The Other is that part of you
That you have disowned.
Why expect anything
Of real value
From a world
Designed for disappointment?
Then what? What else is there
Apart from this world?
Of what purpose its enticements and its promises?
What is the ultimate fate of our hopes, our efforts?
The world’s vacuousness
Becomes your ache
A sorrow that leaves you wondering
About what counts as real happiness.
The world is a provider, not a giver
The individual can only find meaning in giving
He can neither satisfactorily take
Nor meaningfully provide.
To make something
Of what is provided
Is the art of man.
This art cultivates him.
Through his art, he transforms his ignorance to faith
He learns to stand unaffected and un-compromised
By the vagaries of the world.
His artifice reflecting a profound wisdom.
The lies of the world cannot be changed
By the activism of truth.
Truth is in being
Not in dreaming.
The truth just is-
unlimited, infinite in its possibilities.
It’s neither an idea
Nor an ideal.
If the world feels like a disappointment
It’s a time to grow
It’s an opportunity to cultivate new means
It’s time to recalibrate your perception of the world.
Emotional pain is a shapeshifter
It can take on endless forms
The more you try to escape it
The more persistently it stays with you.
Suffering is the price you pay
For being a fugitive in life.
An ache-less heart is no solution
It is the most ignoble form of suffering.
It reeks of weakness…cowardice…denial.
A habitual dulling of pain
Through a vapid indulgence in the pits of pleasure
Cannot really be an indication of wellbeing.
To be free from pain
One must climb its walls
Refusing to be imprisoned by it.
One must see
The want it points to;
As that is the need of your soul.
Wisdom is coming to know
The unreality of dichotomies.
Our pain is not the problem;
It points to the problem.
Our pain is not a signal of things dying
But is the harbinger of a new possibility.
Adapting
I’m coming to see
Is not as benign a process
As it is made out to be…
Generally suggesting a soft compromise…
New conditions
Can appear before you
As a real threat
To your values, your hopes, your orientations
…all that defines you.
You stand disoriented; destabilised
By the disappearance of foundational principles;
A humiliating reminder
That all that you considered to be real
Was the false at its deceptive best.
Continuity, in the world
Operates differently.
It means continuous change
Brought about by osmosis
Truth and singularity are not its virtues
And yet dishonesty and susceptibility cannot be yours…
Is the world nothing but an illusion?
Is your individuality an illusion?
To adapt means to let go
(Sometimes with great spirit)–
Of your definitions… your ideas… your certainties.
Because those are the real illusions.
The Beautiful is the teacher
Of the Philosophical.
Apprehending beauty
Is the dawn of understanding.
Expressing beauty
Is the awakening of knowledge
Living as its instrument
Is our pilgrimage to wisdom.
Love is indefinable
But it needs to be explained
Lest we begin to define it
In terms of our bittersweet experiences;
In terms of what it never was–
An artefact of our desires.
Love,
Even if it were a thing
Would not be the thing in itself
But the spirit that lends itself
To a constitution and
Makes perceptible a harmony.
It’s the melody in a song
It’s the fragrance that emanates
From a flower and then
Fills up the air that surrounds it.
It is the intensity within emotion
That is distinct from the emotion itself.
Our very being is love.
And to the extent we are free
From the hunger and thirst of the heart;
From the endless wanting of the mind–
To that extent we are able
To express our love.
To think deeply
Is to question
The known.
It is to wonder
About the origins of our faith
And of faith’s true meaning.
It is to learn…
Not so that the learning
Becomes our new way,
But so that
One can recenter
On the path one is already on.
To think deeply
Is to express life’s experiences-
Good or bad- aesthetically.
To think deeply
Is to put thought to work
And action in deference to wisdom.
In a sea of people
You are a wave.
In a country of hopes
You are an expectation.
In a family with needs
You are a sustainer
In an institution of faith
You are belief.
In a group of equals
You are a voice.
Amongst ‘forever friends’
You are comfort and company.
In an industry and the economy
You are a resource.
In passing time
You are a memory.
In changing reality
You are a constant.
In being and becoming
You are but a witness.
For every hour
That one has lived…
Enjoyed… endured…
There has been
The eventual triumph
Of reason, relationships and resolve.
What greater proof of one’s abilities
Than their having lived
Without losing love and hope…
And having sustained their families
Their passions, their disciplines…
Their faith.
How do we reconcile
The dichotomies of our lives?
–Faith and cynicism
–Hope and despair
–Love and disgust
–Pure being and conditioned thinking…
Doomed as we are
To be vulgar in choosing…
Irrespective
Of what choices we make.
…Or should we just live in limbo?
Eternally unfulfilled…
Except in the art we create
The stories we tell
The poetry we write
And the philosophies we propose.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 