Posted on by solangesuri2015

To Be is not To Be

I have no expectations
From my relationships
Other than integrity
–An integrity that needs no justification.

I distrust tall claims
Of love and support
Of intensity and eternity
I find them unnecessary and performative.

To be there for another
Requires no art, no utterance
If you are in a relationship
You are–for better or for worse–already there.

So many relationships disintegrate
Because promises made were unkept.
Over the course of weeks, months and years
Love once proclaimed, now remains a faint echo.

Intimacy, a deepening, an anchoring…
These are the fruits of a simple tree
That weathers all weathers
And lives through many a changing season.

To be is to stand apart
From all imagination and all make-believe
To freely exist in between the lines
To slip out of the captivity of a script.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

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.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Sometimes You Wonder…

Sometimes you wonder
About all that you’ve accumulated
To your soul
What will happen to it all
After you’ve gone?
Where will it go?
All the stuff?
All that matter…?
All that you think matters…?
What happens to it….?
Isn’t it also a sort of living responsibility
To give it all away?
To empty yourself before you go?

Who will I give my memories to?
…Perhaps those whom I create them with.
And my thoughts?
May they henceforth only be a prayer
And may they live on
In the lives of others
As blessings received, unasked for.
What about my hurt and my pain?
To what will they transform?
Let them remain absorbed in silence
And become the compassion and beauty
That inspires and powers all art.

Sometimes you wonder
To this eventuality of death
What matters? What doesn’t?
Does nothing matter?
Does everything matter?
What promises does time keep?
Fulfilment? Knowledge? Self-discovery?
Perhaps these are never the outcome
Of a living process…
Perhaps fulfilment, knowledge and self-discovery
Exist eternally and are right here, right now.
In time, matter can only appear and disappear.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

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

All That We Waste

We waste our mental energies
Worrying disproportionately of things
That are of little consequence;
Or which cannot be undone by our doing.

We waste our time
Trying to become someone other than we are
Thinking that our happiness lies elsewhere
And must be sought, or conquered…or strived for.

We waste our lives
Thinking that our personal stories matter
Unaware that with a name and an identity
Our existence is a life created by a surrogate self.

We waste our relationships
Expecting from them a life
We’re unable to give ourselves.
Seeking fulfilment without putting our love to work.

We waste our education
By stopping the process of learning
Thinking of it as a badge of accomplishment
And not as a living aspect that needs to be nurtured.

We waste our passions
By corrupting their purpose
Relegating the highest in us
To deliver to us our lowest, most basic goals.

We waste our well of emotions
By treating it like a dump
For our petty fears, anxieties and our hatred
We’re no longer able to taste their sweetness.

We squander away our spirit
Because we mistake its silence for its absence
Unable to understand how simple stillness
Can convey us from confusion to clarity.

Is it any surprise therefore,
That our land, our trees, our waters, our air
Our communities, our society, our culture
Also lie wasted?

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

Happy ‘New’ Year

As the year comes to an end
(Or does it?)
I’m unable to recall all its details
We may be living through time
But we are no longer able to register it.
Event after event
Has left no room for non-event.
The bliss of occasionally doing nothing…
Being nothing…
Wanting nothing…
Is now a faint memory.
The intervals, the breaks
That allowed for savouring the good times
And reflecting on the challenging ones
Are now gone.
There’s always some pressing thing
That needs to be done NOW.
Meandering conversations that were
Devoid of an agenda…
Gone…

Time used to feel different…
Expending time was an art.
Now it is survival.
In trying to enslave time
And have it deliver to us
A daily– if not an hourly– entertainment
Or a resounding echo of applause and achievement
We’ve enslaved ourselves to its impermanence.
The romantic notion of ‘forever’
Is so last century
(Which I ironically remember quite well!)
We no longer tread with soft resolve along the path
Of our hopes and dreams
We obnoxiously demand immediate ‘results’.

Vision too, is no longer what it used to be.
Why bother to think far ahead
When what is immediate is always so urgent and compelling?
Life, was earlier understood as being eternal…
Now, we’re petrified of losing the ‘moment’.
And all we do
By cracking the whip on time
Is that we create and accumulate
Things of no value.
Value, we must bear in mind,
Is a quality of a thing that has prevailed through time.
And time?
Time is nothing but the gap between two events…
Which we’re now determined to use up.

So, as we step into yet another event
Which incidentally is of a grammatically poor sense
Sense it lacks the punctuation by a non-event.
I will use yet another relic from the past
(Something that is also so last century)
And wish you all a Happy ‘New’ Year!

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?”