All work is about facilitating…
Making easy…
Making possible…
Making a difference…
I look at myself…
Small…limited…
And confined
Within myself.
I wonder…
How do I make easy,
Make possible
My own freedom?
By what means will I make a difference to me?
Not Yet There…
I’ve read about people
Who have swum
The expanse of oceans
And experienced its dark
Murky depths
And emerged victorious
And grateful for being alive.
I muse about the aptness
Of its metaphor
For the experiences I’ve had…
I’ve plumbed my own depths
Straddled in a nowhere space
Neither here nor there
Neither up nor down
Chiming to an external rhythm
Of day and night
But swimming in a dark expanse within.
I still haven’t emerged victorious.
I wonder what I should do
With my aliveness.
We’re One
How strange
That love must have rituals
That elaborately and
With excessive pomp and show
Declare on a fixed date
Year after year
The design of our love.
Of course, this works beautifully
When one has to live up to the lie
Of words and sentiments
That were, in the first place,
Exaggerations of plain feelings
That would otherwise go unnoticed
And unheard
In the loud and garish spectacle
Of a theatrical world.
Love is essence, not feeling
It’s not a hope, or an ideal
Neither is it a needy prayer
It’s there in our midst
When we speak through silence
Needing nothing
To decorate our being
Or to celebrate our love
(It’s not an accomplishment)
We’re no longer together
We’re one.
It’s Not a Small Thing
To be given the chance
To learn something
Isn’t a small thing
It means that your heart and mind
Have qualified to receive
The gift of knowledge.
They’ve gone through
The treachery
Of phony knowledge
And paid a heavy price
For ignorance…
And survived it!
A humbling experience
At some point
Has earned you the merit
Of this moment
The realization that
Knowledge can only be received, not claimed.
That moment
When your receptive heart
Is sitting at the feet
Of a knowing preceptor
And listening intently
To words that make perfect sense…
That moment is not a small thing.
Lose It
Reality doesn’t necessarily abide in
The architecture the world has designed…
There exist men of high morality and character
Wearing the face of convicts in prison cells…
And there are murderers and rapists
In the guise of priests in places of worship…
The best teachers and students
Don’t necessarily sit face to face in elite institutions
But may be living in old, decrepit workshops, inns and shanties…
The best poet may not be found in between the hardbound covers of a book
But may be speaking his heart to an unlettered ear in a tavern…
The best art may not always be in elegant homes and galleries
But may be lying neglected in a corner occupied by a homeless man…
To know life then…
One must learn to do away with a contrived sense
To look outside of the shape and structure of things
And meet life bare and naked in mind
With the wisdom that understands
That knowledge gained
Must be knowledge lost.
Lateness
I know you see me live
And ask of me all that I can give
But I’ve always wondered why
We don’t see each other die
Things often taken a turn
When the last remains burn
So easily we let go
Of all unworthy sorrow
And see clearly through moist eyes
That death claims us
long before we actually die.
Getting Real
The Real and The False
The problem is-
Exist not as two, but are one
Not white, not black
The fog in my mind
Is a dense, ambiguous grey…
It reveals nothing
I’m left to speculate
About reasons for my pain
For my suffering… For my challenges…
The only thing I know
Is that I’m ignorant of the Truth
That I can’t see beyond this lying,
Indistinct grey haze…
That’s my only and most primary sense
Of the Real.
Not Me
Memory persisted
Old battles were recalled
The same arguments were replayed
The same reactions followed
I resolved to deal with this
I was eager to put this behind me
But what was this?
What is ‘me’?
I began to search for answers
And the harder I looked
The clearer it became…
Existence had no trace
Of my conflicts
Nor any interest in ‘me’.
The problem, the memory
Were mine alone.
Memories had molded my mind
Memories had left me with joys and sorrows
Memory needs more memory to be…
The mind is a mad king
A sovereign who usurps experiences
And calls them his own.
Without the mind
I just am…
Memory is not me.
The Last Hurdle
Life changed me
Just as much as
I changed through life
Old sentiments were discarded
Compulsions disguised as affections
Had now vanished
I distanced myself from the unnecessary
And felt no moral need
To appease the disgruntled
I felt no empathy
For the irresponsible
Nor interest in the dramas gripping their lives.
Repetition is a chronic condition
That cannot be cured
By either reason or rage.
I no longer saw the sense
Of paying a price of solitude
For the lesser charms of company
The desire to be surrounded
By relationships and
To be attended to, adored and celebrated-also gone!
All has left me
But this voice within
That judges me for drifting away
Telling me
It’s a fault I need to correct
That in the end I’ll be left alone.
I know
That it’s a matter of time…
The voice too will fade into the distance
A faint murmur
And then nothing…
Nothing, but oneness.
Pruning
I intentionally dwarf myself
Cutting myself down to size
Afraid that my own largeness
May be a false idea.
And yet…
Even as I continue to belittle myself
The truth of my staggering stature
Reveals itself.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 