It was a three-hour drive that drove us.
A six-pack
inert
Silent in thought
and throbbing in pulse
Each of us immersed
in a reality of our own
Wombed together
in a pregnant pause
We each emerged a little
in clumsy attempts to connect
Islands adrift
In a sea of consciousness
Aware
but unknowing
Too close for comfort
Yet far away…
None of us had anything to say.
Ignorance has a wide circle of friends
Ignorance has tremendous influence
It draws me to people
And people to me
Our common pretense, our common act
We come together in what we lack
Or so we say always believing
It’s through another’s eyes I may understand my seeing
There’s no place among friends for him who knows
It’s your ignorance, your inadequacy that opens up doors
It’s Understanding though that has afforded me this insight
That Ignorance need not be wrong, it can be very right
Especially when you need some friends
Understand that you’re better of with Ignorance.
Our economic system is flawed.
Our political system is flawed.
Our education system is flawed.
Our society is flawed.
Because they thrive on falsehood
They need lies for profit, for leverage
And in and through their design
All work is sacrilegious and a curse.
Poverty is immanent in wealth
We only graduate in degrees of ignorance
And man is bound to man in a wretched dependency.
The root of all this is the individual
Fallen from Grace
He seeks his Self
He tries to know who he is
By being who he’s not (a sum of different parts).
Filled with deluded notions of grandeur
He procures. He makes. He sells.
And he is celebrated for the profit he makes.
In this blinding business of generating profit
He is left with sight, but loses his power to perceive.
With such an impairment
He can find worldly sustenance only through profit
He woos gain
And fears loss
He is wide in mirth
But shrivelled in sorrow
He wants only part of what life has to offer
He has no faith in the whole.
And the Truth cannot be anything but whole
The Truth Is.
It need not be created
The Truth cannot be measured by numbers or degrees
It is all-pervading and all-embracing.
Truth does not grow
It does not favour
the rich over the poor
the strong over the weak
the haves over the have-nots.
Infallible in its system
It awaits our homecoming
If only man could find solace
in the knowledge that it’s okay to not know…
And simply accept his being
Forego the contrivances of “who” or “what”.
And celebrate am-ness…
Then Truth would speak
And Truth would need
That which only Truth can give
Truth would ask
And Truth would answer
And Truth would accept
What Truth had made.
The mind is movement
perceived by the virtue of stillness
It is an influent
whose ultimate source
and ultimate end
is a mystery.
Watch then, you
with the eyes of your soul
its spectre of affections:
of fear and sorrow
of longing and ecstasy.
And even though
in its search for truth
it makes things true
Distance its truth
as one would a lie
And marvel at its virtuosity.
Appreciate it
As you would appreciate a Monet
not just for an enchanting picture painted
but also for seeking to understand
the illuminating and glorious
light of the day.
Time, our common inheritance, is given to us bit by bit, in instalments. It is apprehended as the gap between two experiences or two memories. We experience time in our experience of having moved forward, or in having left behind an experience or in having grown. It is in the growth of our consciousness that we experience time. And although it is our common gift, we differ in the way we experience time…in what we choose to do with it. For some, time is the dull, aching persistence of memory. For others, it’s marked by the chase of a desire for an imagined future. Our being is often torn between our past and our worries or hopes for the future.
Our experience of time is dependent upon the quality, quantity and pre-occupations of our thoughts. The more the thoughts and the more they revolve around your self and your plans, the more you will stand defeated. The rich rewards time yields can never be claimed by one who is under the captivity of his/her own mind. They can only be reaped by those who are free of their past and have faith in a yet unseen future. This faith allows them to live without fear-in the here and the now.
We swim through life in a sea of eternity. The past, present and future are our mental constructs; they have no basis in reality. We simply move from the present to the present, bit-by-bit. We grow, or at least we ought to, in our ability to grasp the wealth of a single moment. Right now is all I am bequeathed. Right now is all that I have.
My grand ideas keep me from appreciating the little. I equate ‘more’ with ‘more’. I’m unable to see that in the dimension of time, a breadth of accomplishment lies in the depth of a moment. Is it possible that in this moment of a single breath, I accomplish all that I must accomplish. In wanting something more than what this moment is offering me, am I not missing something? What is a year after all, if not an exponential day? And what is a day, if not an exponential hour? And what is an hour, if not an exponential minute?
The question then should be : How do I raise the power of my present? The only way to raise the power of the present is to LIVE IN IT. Living in the present requires that we be free of worry and entrenched in faith. The faithless move from one enchantment to the next, foolishly bypassing the miracles of their own lives. Unable to see the value in their existence as it is, they long for another. In their longing, plans and journeys are made, things are acquired and positions sought. They wait for that moment when they will taste the times they long for, looking down in irritation at the present that seems so indifferent and ordinary. They often talk about ‘killing’ time, rather than ‘living’ it. To have faith, is to awaken to the power of both- REASON and INTUITION. A person of faith knows that he has all that he needs to ride heroically on this moment. It’s not wiled away in longing, but befriended through an exchange of capabilities. The moments are lived as a celebration; they’re not wasted in planning a celebration. The wise know that there is nothing to be gained in life, that life-in this moment- is the gain itself.
Right now-
I realized
Cannot be met
With charming words
It will meet you only in silence.
Right now-
Wants and desires
An immediate and intense union
A disappearance of two
And the appearance of the one.
Right now-
Refuses to conform
To the conventional, the old
Where the world ‘exists’ in a long-dead relationship
Between subject and predicate.
Right now-
I am worthless in what I know and possess
But valuable (I sense)
In my sheer presence
Beggared of all accumulated wealth.
Right now-
I am humbled
By this lack of basic ability
To share with you
The gift of the new.
Right now-
I realize
I shall have to make do
With greeting cards and amusing knick-knacks
To convey fossilized feelings to you.
Right now-
I appreciate the distance between us
Hoping that wherever you are
You are alone, immersed in your own presence
Receiving this gift that I lack the ability to give.
Life as we know it, expresses itself through change and activity. Life is dynamic, consistently changing and forever modifying its many forms. Nothing is constant in life. And yet, the life force itself is eternal- lying outside of the bounds of time and space. Life, in order to be perpetual, must constantly die to be reborn. In other words, change is the very nature of the permanent. It is the ephemeral that sustains eternity. The movement from existence to birth, to growth and maturity and then to eventual decay and death- of just about anything available to our experience- is an undeniable and verifiable truth. Yet we, despite our experiences with impermanence, seek a life- in the midst of all the props that constitute our lives- of uninterrupted and everlasting joy! We superimpose our personal stories on the impersonal and universal currents of life. And then we try with futility, to arrest change to fulfill personal desires and if that’s not possible, to order it according to our will.
Change, especially hard-hitting, unpleasant change frightens us. We seek to protect ourselves from it. We acquire, collect, own and form alliances in a bid to stonewall change, to prolong pleasant experiences and to defer death. It is not the enduring occurrences of change, impermanence and death that are the cause of our sorrow: it is in our misconception of life that our sorrows grow like weeds. It is in our apathy and indifference to the laws of life and a disinterest in our own cultural development, that our sorrows take root. The only way out of suffering is to simply ‘choose’ not to suffer.
Choice is our most potent gift. And every moment of our lives as human beings, we are called to choose. An empowered life is one where choices are asserted. But before they’re asserted, we must be aware that we have a choice. One of our most fundamental mistakes is to believe that the availability of choice is dependent on our circumstances. Our circumstances have no bearing on our capacity to choose. On the contrary, it is our ‘capacity to choose’ that can defeat even the most debilitating circumstances. We may not be able to escape sorrow and change and loss, but we have a choice in whether or not we suffer!
This ability to choose our response is available to all- rich or poor, strong or weak, literate or illiterate. It is in this unique ability that all men stand equal. Yet we don’t recognize this. We strive hard to improve our circumstances, and also seek an improvement in life conditions for all, thinking that therein lays the key to universal happiness. We’ve even tried to order nature; and we’ve seen the many harmful repercussions of that! Like the old lady in a Sufi parable who spent all day looking for her sewing needle in a haystack outside her house with a couple of villagers who had joined in to help her search. Exasperated, one of them finally asked the old lady, ”Where did you drop the needle!” “Inside the house,” she replied. “Then why are you looking for it here!” asked the perplexed villagers. To this the old lady with smiling, twinkling eyes asked of them: “Why is it that when God is within you, you search for Him outside?”
In the same vein, the key to enduring happiness doesn’t lie in a set of perfect circumstances outside of us; it lies within. It exists in our capacity to choose. We disempower ourselves when we do not exercise choice. Choosing is essential to freedom. Choice is that secret door through which our souls can walk in and walk out at will. Without awareness of ‘this door’ in our abodes, we live our lives as prisoners trapped and enslaved by life and its whimsical twists and turns.
The culture of human beings rests on this hope that man can remain noble and undeterred through any changing circumstance; that the test of our maturity lies in our unaffected demeanor through either abundance or adversity. Loss and sorrow are inevitable experiences in the course of our lives. No one is spared. And yet, we’re given the final word- you’re not defeated till you ‘think’ you’re defeated; you don’t ‘have’ to suffer the loss of wealth, reputation or a loved one; you can choose to harness these experiences for self-discovery and growth. Ultimately, to be or not to be- the choice is ours.
Contemplation is my shrine, my sanctuary
Therein lies my peace, my solace and my freedom
It is in this space that I give of myself and receive
It is this that is my essential nature
And all that I have is offered
In obeisance, in worship and in sacrifice
For its flame to be eternally kindled
And I protect it
As one would protect something dear
I share it with the listeners
Or with those who ask of my thoughts
Or with those in need
And all of this happens naturally
With effortlessness and in eternal wisdom
There is no conflict
No division of myself
The giver and receiver
Are not two but one
There is no higher or lower self here
And no question of prudence
There is just this
Complete in itself
Independent of my ‘knowing’
And now it feeds me with this thought
Offers unto its own flame
Must there necessarily be a way to God
Or is it not that God is the Way?
As in the silence of a prayer
I sit facing a blank page
White. Clean.
Spotless. Silent.
It’s only now
When a thought enters my mind
That ink inscribes
These words on this page
And now that I understand
That what was
In the absence of thought
The presence of absolutely nothing
I wonder
What thought was that
That carved before me
The relief of your face and features
And placed at distances
Near and far
Spaces that I visit
And spaces that await me
What thought was it
That placed me
Just here, just now
In silent communion with an empty page.
What happened last night?
We made an uncomfortable threesome
You, me and Fear
I’m not even sure of the name…
Was it Fear?
Or Desire?
Anger?
Or Bruised Ego?
Does it even matter?
Maybe all that matters
Was the uninvited
Uncalled for
Presence of a third
I couldn’t reach out to you
And you wouldn’t reach out to me
My helplessness dissolved into the oceans of my heart
That welled up and drowned most of my mindscape
I feel almost nothing now
Nothing…
Not helplessness
Not fear
Not anger
Not resentment
I feel naked
But am at peace with my nakedness
I feel hollow and light
Dead, unburdened and strangely alive
Which was how
Today amidst doing my daily chores
I who had died
Buried the dead.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 