Posted on by solangesuri2015

What’s Missing?

I look at my life unable to tell
What is missing…

But a vacancy I can sense.

So, I begin to speculate about
What would make things perfect…
A spotless, stainless, painless existence perhaps?

No… that’s not it.

Recognition? Validation?
No, that’s not it either…
I’ve tasted these before
And know that they can intoxicate
But cannot satiate your thirst.

What is that essential thing
That I can’t seem to find?

Is there something lacking in the world?
Or is there a lack within me?
A lack of understanding and wisdom?
A way of seeing?
A way of being?

An inability perhaps to accept things as they are
To see the perfection of imperfection…
To know that all is
As it is meant to be…

I now know that it is my search
That keep me from finding
What stands before me in plain sight
Waiting to be seen and loved.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

The Wrong Questions

There is a problem
With asking the wrong questions-
You are given the wrong answers.

To what may have been the answer
To the question of how to live this life
The world stands before us-
Our mistaken understanding of life as a pursuit.

With poisoned air and drying lakes
And rivers that no longer flow with joy
Our dysfunctional societies (but our functional apps)-
Our intelligence has foolishly destroyed the intelligent.

Our satanic violence and our violent ambitions
Our greed, and our theft of that which sustains life
Our escapes now dependent on our simulated realities-
We decimate providence to establish our supremacy….

We’re now asking the (wrong) question
Of what’s next… of what we should become
But we’re still clueless about
What understanding…. what faith it takes
To simply be.

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Our Experiments With Humanity

The artificial is a reconstruction
Of that which is natural and phenomenal
But intelligence isn’t merely generative;
It is responsive… restorative; it is existential.

It is never merely the means that produce
Beautiful, soul-stirring expression.
True art is not a bringing together
It’s about action and emotion coming together.

Love too, is not a search or a swipe.
It’s not about finding the one.
It’s about being the one
For those who have found you.

Perhaps our biggest failing
Is that we’ve tried to reduce
The human being to a concept…
To a pattern or a code that we can know.

But knowledge is vaster than our knowing
And therefore must be freed
From all models of language and dogma
So that we may rediscover what it means to be.

Now that we can create like Gods
Will we ever be able to reclaim our humanity
Staying simply and faithfully
In a state of inspired wonder?

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Suffering

The broken arm
The broken leg
The broken heart
The broken dreams

The brutal separation
The unmet expectations
The shattered myth
The unfulfilled desires

The empty hour
The vacant days
The crushing disappointment
The weight of disillusionment

Suffering takes on many forms.

Isn’t it our common condition?
Isn’t it a reminder to us all
That our attachments will yield
Nothing but sorrow?

That we must let go
Of all our clinging
And dwell not in misery
But set foot towards a higher dimension.

That we must walk alone
In pain, but liberated
Fully free to experience our sorrow
So that we are free from suffering it.

The morning breeze caresses me gently. It is nonchalant.

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Understanding

True achievement lies
In dissolving all achievements
So that you are left
With a beginner’s mind…

I’m coming to see
That the most valuable
Part of my life
Are moments of silence and solitude.

There was a time
I saw them as empty…
Something that I must fill up
With something meaningful.

Today, I realize
Nothing apart from
My sheer existence
Has any meaning.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

We’re All Influencers

We’re all influencers
To the extent
That the things that we say and do…
And the way that we are…
Live on in the memory of others,
And find continuity and new expression
In the choices they make through their lives.

The decision to no longer hide the greys
In your hair, or to no longer be ashamed
Of a more rounded body…
Or the ability to laugh at yourself…
Or in what you consider to be
The warmth of a home…
Or even the names you give to your children…

All of these are the traces
Of a lasting impression made on us.
But not all of us is someone else…
There is something about us that belongs to us alone.
And the real influence you will have
Is in the way you are
Uniquely you.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Wisdom is to Not Seek

How can we guide another
When we ourselves are lost?
In what direction must we head
To arrive to the certainties we seek?
What if there are no certainties?
What if there are no promised utopias?
To what end then, our strife
Our battles, our politics, our wars?

Why must my sorrow suggest a better condition?
Perhaps transcendence is not a future condition
Perhaps transcendence is not escape
Neither is it the defeat of an evil external to us.
Perhaps transcendence lies in seeing
The highest in the lowest
The best in the worst
The temple in the debris.

The best in our lives
Must be recreated.
The worst in us
Must be conquered.
It’s not the other who needs correction.
We must correct ourselves.
If we know not who to be or where to be
We must simply stay open to possibility.

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There Are Many Ways to Correct a Wrong

There are many ways to correct a wrong.
One can speak up against a wrong;
One can seek punishment for a wrongdoer;
One can use scathing words to elicit awareness.
One can use violence and weaponise sentiment.
Or, one can show intolerance
And distance themselves from the wrong;
One may also denounce the rogue
As being morally corrupt.

Or, one can show patience
And understanding and kindness…
Correcting a wrong requires strength.
It’s not something that the weak can do.
And strength comes from endurance,
Restraint, faith and love.
All the qualities that the weak lack.
Putting down is not power;
Lifting up the fallen is.

There is this parable
Of a sincere, duty-bound policeman
Who would diligently scan the town
And arrest and put behind bars
All the scum who were up to no good.
In the same town was a monk
Who would intentionally commit a wrong
Just to be arrested and put behind bars
Where he would teach and enlighten the scum.

There are many ways to correct a wrong.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Could I Be Wrong?

To wonder is to rise above
The confines of your existence.

Ask yourself:
If your opinions and views
Have remained unchallenged.
If you have resisted the changing seasons
Ushered in by time.
If your knowledge has over time
Become imprisoned by your arrogance or fear

Or conversely,
If the ideas that now energize you
Are a mere flirtation with the new.
And the jargon of the day
Has become your buzz
Or if change is admired not for what it brings
But for its own sake.

The right and the wrong
Are not attributes of who we are
Or of the things and ideas
That make up our world
Right and wrong rest in the relationships we have
With the unrealities of the world
Right is the surrender to dharma in the midst of adharma.

To be right is to be in love
Being expanded beyond narrow self-concern.
To be right is to be in wonder
Free and open to review and to relearn.
To be right is to be in surrender
To that unconditioned consciousness
That can be trusted as your only true counsel.

To be in dharma is to ask ever so often,
“Could I be wrong about this?”

Posted on by solangesuri2015

If You Are to be a Creator

If you are to be a creator
Then you must be a lover
And have it within you
To give attention…
For it is our attention
That first renders
The seen, the heard, the spoken
And the felt as
Worthy and beautiful.

You must be yielding
To chance and adventure
For discovery and unplanned events
Are the encounters
That shape, mould and scar
And emerge as the forms
Of our memory in transition.
Strange and wild and new
They will stand before us in question.

They will want to know their purpose
They seek a place to be…to exist
They will demand your time
And your commitment.
It will be up to you
To provide them with meaning
A reason to be…
They must now live alongside…
They now share your destiny.