No, I will not be diminished
By your dismissal of me.
No, I will not disappear
Just because you refuse to notice me.
No, I will not conform;
I will not yield to your violence.
No, I will not further your agenda
While I secretly resist it.
No, I will not agree with you;
I will not prove you right about my adaptability
No, I will not be
Who you would like me to be.
My existence will not be exploited
By your machinations and for your ambitions.
No.
We create the meaningless
When we pursue the meaningful
And then,
The more we pursue the meaningful
The more meaningless it becomes.
It’s only when we stop our pursuit
That we’re able to give to
And receive from everything
Regardless of its meaning.
Life is a Tango
Best performed like a dance.
Be attuned to changing rhythms
Be light. Be ready. Be responsive.
Tease life. Challenge it. Own it.
Be graceful.
Grace is about offering yourself
To the divinity of the moment
Knowing that glory
Lies in defeating limitation.
Are you-
Feeling low? -Step up.
Feeling hopeless? -Step forward.
Feeling confident? -Step back.
Life is not so much an externality
As it is an internal movement
Of pulse and impulse
-Unknown cause and
Its sorrowful effect….
Between which man must learn
How to be. Should he be
Defined by his fears and
Limited by his desires?
Or, refusing all definitions and
Rejecting the impulse for an identity
He should give up the idea of being someone?
Achievement (of anything in this world)
Cannot be a worthy goal
If it is pursued for its own sake.
It becomes liberating
When it entails
Leaving behind the need
To be accomplished
…To be someone distinctive
In the vastness of existence
That is the real need;
The real poverty of consciousness
We need to be free of.
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.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 