It’s at a distance
That your salvation awaits
Never near…
But never out of reach
Always urging you
To walk that extra mile.
Is what we seek, there-
At the end of a distance covered?
Or is it that in covering a distance
We leave behind all
That was standing in the way
Of what we were seeking?
Learning can give nothing but anxiety
To one who considers himself ignorant.
And learning is wasted on one
Who believes he already knows
Learning is not an acquisition.
It’s a quality of being-
Present. Attentive. Deferential.
Surrendered to the Truth.
Learning is intelligence in action
Not the intellect in inertia.
Learning, in essence
Is an act of deep love.
Haven’t you felt that
Your trust abides
Only where there is
The all-pervasive presence of love?
To break another’s trust;
To belittle it…
Or to shame it
For not being enough–
Is to live without that presence
Without faith…
Enclosed within
Your misconceptions and self-obsession.
Love allows you to
Extend yourself
To trust that where there is love
There is truth.
Trust and love
Keep your heart open
Your perspective broad
And your thoughts kind
The gift of trust
Is love’s greatest reward
To have lost your trust
Is to have also lost love along the way.
You could complete
Something that demands
Completion
And yet be fulfilled
While it is incomplete.
Fulfilment is not dependent on completion.
To be fulfilled is to be
Poised to render incompletion
With unconditional love and acceptance
Assimilating the humility
That comes from unachieved outcomes.
There is occasionally
An hour
That is eventful…
A pivoting moment
Where you stand
Divinely reminded
Of what is worth
Living for
And what is the worth
In losing.
To a seeker
No occurrence is vain.
Everything colludes
To provide you
With new meaning
Fresh insight
Or an accepting wisdom
Where the vision that clearly sees
Differences and distinctions
Begins to blur.
Watch this moment
Absorb its essence
Feel your emotion
But do not emotionalize
The moment.
Humanity is not a particular
Flavor, after all
It requires no recipe.
It’s a quest… To be human
Is to search for promise.
Even though
I tended to my plants
With unfailing care
They still withered
And died
Too soon.
Nevertheless
New life sprouted quickly and
Once again life bloomed.
Death, I learned
Is not the end of life
But its release.
So, mourn not my end
For what will end
Was never life.
A wise soul once said:
“You’re never more alive
Than when you’re dead.”
A crisis threatens you
With loss…
A loss of meaning and purpose;
Or with a loss of resources
And reserves.
A crisis reminds you
That life comes with no guarantees
That to live means to incur debt
That must be repaid
To all that sustains, nourishes and protects you.
A crisis teaches you
To live with deference
To wait and to be grateful
To effectively transact the business of life
By refusing to bank on it.
A crisis inaugurates
Your liberation
From the smallness of certainties
To a realm of possibility
A crisis is a time to live consciously.
A crisis conveys you
From the narrow alleys of fear
To the vast open skies of promise
You renew your relationship
With trust and faith.
A crisis is integral
To the design of humanity.
It reminds us that to simply be
One need not be accomplished
Just alive and inspired.
Growth is not in itself a virtue
And to seek it for its own sake
Is to have misunderstood its purpose.
We grow in and through
Movements that yield self-discovery,
Realization… a deeper seeing.
True growth is a natural process
Not a simulated artifice
It’s not a measure on a scale.
Leave things alone;
Let them simply be-
Immersed in time and space.
Allow them their abrasions
Allow them their struggles
Allow them their fight to be.
Growth is not merely expansion;
At its heart
It’s a search for possibility.
Roads, streets and street corners
Are so much more
Than an urban infrastructure…
They are keepers of time-
The interstices of our destinies;
They convey us from the past
To the present and from here
To the future.
Who knew then
That the street corners
Where we hung around
On lazy, bright afternoons
And warm, dusky evenings
Would echo their laughter
Far into a future
That is today.
The street-corner musings
On life, its irony and love
Continuing, despite distances
And disagreeing time zones;
When your day is my night
And my night is your day…
Yet we continue to chat on WhatsApp
As though we’re hanging around the corner.
Or the long drives that began
In the spring of 1991-travelled far…
Shared moments grew into a shared life.
These roads allowed us
To meander aimlessly
To simply revel in being together
Or to meet secretly- anywhere apart
From the places we were outgrowing.
On these very streets
We imagined a life of our dreams
In its tiny establishments we worked,
Positing our hopes for a larger life
A bigger future…
Not knowing then that in the future
That is today
We would come to miss terribly
Those roads, streets and street corners
Where we simply hung around.
Time is His Will
Time is His Gift
Time is Our Being
To be is to be
In sync with time.
Following its cue
Matching its step…
True morality is not a resistance
It demands a dissolution of individuality
Dissolve into the moment…
Let it consume you
From the standpoint of the highest peak
Our polarities disappear
When all is good
So is the bad; the evil.
Be willing to be destroyed
Be bold enough to destroy
Experience everything-
Joy and happiness
Sorrow and bitterness.
Feel your sadness
But do not become sad
Feel your pain
But do not become miserable
Just be; don’t become.
There’s nothing to be gained from the world
There’s nothing that the world
Can take away from you
If only you don’t insist on being
What you’ve now become.
So, tell me…
What you are feeling
What you’re struggling with
So, tell me
How are you?
