Occasionally disappear
Do not be available
Leave
Be absent
Stay silent
Lay low
Don’t reply
Too much contact
With the world
Robs you of your silence
And it’s your silence
That insulates you
That sustains your being
In an eternally divine embrace.
A Measured Human Being
To be lost and confused
Is the naivety of freedom
Which requires artfulness
To acquire meaning.
Freedom, although a given
Must be sought
And understood
Through a sincere quest
Of your purpose
Of your reason-to-be.
You must come to know
Your talents; develop skill
And intuitively learn
The art of self-restraint
For in order to be a free spirit
You must first learn to be
A measured human being.
The Art of Giving Form to Your Content
The truth that gives your words
Their power and beauty
Abides in the heart
And therefore
If you must speak
Speak your heart
And never your mind.
The heart is immersed in silence
While the mind rides
On the waves of sound
Speak your silence
Therein lies the mystery
The truth of which
All men yearn to see manifest.
It’s not the art of speech
That makes a man eloquent
It’s his mastery
Over the art of silence…
Chisel your words such
That you leave around it
A meaningful silence.
To Be is To Care
Why must it be so exhausting
To care…to act on your vows of love?
Why is it so fraught with frustration?
Almost always going unappreciated
Undervalued…
What if I decided to stop caring?
What if I refused to act on my concern?
Would that cut down
An excess of involvement, of investment?
Why do we get involved?
Why are we invested in another?
What hopes are we pinning to our caring?
Care is not a ‘project for improving’
Care is not a charitable act
That you are called upon
By your conscience to do
Care is not a duty towards another
It’s an obligation to yourself.
Care is the essence of ‘human being’
Creatures of consciousness that we are
Care allows us to connect
With our source
Even as we expand into infinite dimensions
Care is the path we pave
To complete the pilgrimage
Back to ourselves.
The Ritual
Our everyday has become
A joyous never-ceasing
Repetition of the same pattern.
We wake up
At different timings
Me before you
And in the strange assurance of that
I’ve noticed
You sleep even more soundly.
That makes me smile
I tread over the cold floors of our room
Softly, so as not to disturb your snooze.
You sleep through
My repeated opening and shutting of doors
Of packing my bags…
And then sleepily
Grip my hand
And give me your cheek
For that seal of a kiss
Knowing well that even as I’m leaving the house
I’m not leaving us…
That’s the great thing about patterns
They work in sync, symphony
And revel in simple predictability.
The Way We Were
I look at old pictures
Of me…of us…
And marvel at
The play of time and space
Tricking us into believing
That we’ve changed
For the better
That we are today
A truer version of ourselves
Didn’t we feel the same way
About our old pictures back then?
Memory is an echo
That travels from yesterday to today
It’s the sound of the dreams
We saw together
Change is discernable
Only because it plays out on
Something unchanging
I know we’ve changed
Because something about us hasn’t.
Neither That, Nor This.
How strange that
Today, I no longer am
What I once was…
The freedom today
Belongs to the confinement
Of yesterday.
If I am not that
Then neither am I this.
What Makes Me Angry
When justice is what I want
Injustice makes me angry.
When truth is what I want
Lies make me angry.
When perfection is what I want
Imperfection makes me angry.
When agreement is what I want
Disagreement makes me angry.
When respect is what I want
Disrespect makes me angry.
When strength is what I want
Weakness makes me angry.
When ‘one way’ is what I want
‘Many possibilities’ make me angry.
When power is what I want
Disobedience makes me angry.
When morality is what I want
Immorality makes me angry.
A burning desire for one thing
Burns down everything that comes in its way.
It’s not imperfection, injustice or disrespect
That’s the cause of my anger.
It’s the desire of that thing
That stands outside of me…
Unreachable. Unattainable. Evasive.
That makes me angry.
Gone…
I used to refer to it
As Your world, earlier
Now I know
That you can have
Nothing to do
With this sickness…
The world is my doing
A projection of my mind
Why, I wonder
Do innocents suffer?
And if their suffering
Is a projection of my mind
What am I suffering from?
The answers don’t come easy
The pain blocks it all…
I recall the wise words
Of a liberated soul:
“Suffering…,” he had said
“Is the poverty of consciousness.”
The world, I begin to see
Stands as a battered ball
Kicked around for pointless goals
In the space of our minds
We live our lives
To settle old scores
As if that be our reason to be.
Consciousness… pure consciousness
Dear Asifa, just like you…
Has been diminished and killed
You suffered for our sins
The world stands before us today
A cancerous, malignant tumour
Grown out of apathy, pride and greed
I didn’t notice, dear God
That You had left
A long time ago…
Our green pastures
Where little children
Bring their horses to graze
Apparently, you’ve left our temples too.
Disgust
Disgust, I feel you
But find you difficult to understand
How strange
That you are the face
Hiding under the mask of pleasure
Why, I wonder
Is pleasure your grace;
And your disgrace?
What do you want me to see
Now that you and I
Stand face to face?
…That things are
Not what they seem
That their charm is fleeting
And that a lie
Needs ingenuity
To seem like the truth.
Things are what they are.
Their correct proportion
Is a sense cultivated
Through dispassion and distance
Knowing fully well
That pleasure is a gift
Of the imagination
And disgust-
An ironical reminder of that.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 