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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.

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All Gets Done

Flowers bloom
They express so much joy!
But do they do so
Out of their own doing?

They just are…
Receptive… responsive… changeable…
Expressive of that
Which enlivens them.

One need not do to be
Doing is only needed
To sustain the existence
Of that which is not.

One must never fail to be…
Receptive…responsive…changeable…
For in simply being
All gets done.

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Co-existence

Is evil
The absence of good?
Is good
The absence of evil?

When darkness falls
And the light disappears
Must we think of light as a lie;
As a feel-good fairytale?

Must we say it is afraid or weak?
For it allows darkness to conquer it
It’s destined to disappear– and so,
Does its impermanence make it a questionable principle?

Without darkness
We would not know light.
Without light
We would have no hope.

Just like light and darkness
Define each other,
So do good and evil
Clarify each other.

Co-existence is the eternal principle.
We are to the extent we are not.
Non-being is the shadow of being
By which we know that we bear the cross of our existence.

Your shadow tells you that you exist;
Your shadow is not another;
You cannot fight it or destroy it
Without destroying yourself.

We cannot destroy evil
Without destroying the good.
Goodness is right there
Where evil lives.

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Youth

I remember the times when I was young
I could barely wait to grow and explore…
Life held so much promise…
I wanted to know love
I wanted to be versed in the language of beauty
I had ambitions…
And I knew in my heart
That learning the many dimensions of life
Would be one great adventure…

How true was the intuition of my heart…
And yet how unprepared it was
For all that was to unfold…
The heartbreaks, the disappointments, the challenges…
The ups—invariably cut down to size by the downs…
The black and the white that eventually
Always turned into grey.
Nothing, in life, it seemed
Would come easy…
Yet paradoxically,
The difficulties were rarely external.

As one grew, one realized
That dreams abide in our imagination
And living in the lap of time
Involves delays, limitations,
Constraints and conflicts…
The favourable is only an event away
From turning unfavourable…
Romance within the morass of existence too,
Looks different. It rarely is
Picture perfect.

Youth did grow and explore…
In and through its entanglements
With life it discovered–
Patience and determination
Acceptance and love
Resilience and faith.
It attuned itself to life’s rhythms–
Letting go and cherishing
Leaving behind and moving forward
Losing and gaining.

There’s no better teacher for youth
Than life itself.
While youth is blessed with potential
It is only through the spiritual powers
Of courage, compassion, faith and love
That such potential comes to live.
Youth is eternal
After every actualization of potential
One stands once again facing
The promise of new frontiers
The promise of something yet undiscovered.

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The Real Value

A value is that which enriches your existence
Like good health and strength…
Like grace and simplicity…
Like inspiration…
Like creativity…
Like kindness…
Like silence…
Like understanding…
Like clarity…
Like forgiveness…
Like harmony…
All the multifarious aspects of love.

A value is not a number.
It’s also not a thing of degree.
Being rich (in values)
Has nothing to do
With how much you have
It’s about what you’re able to bring.
A value is not a commodity
That you can trade.
Values cannot be purchased;
They can only be realized.
And once realized,
They fulfil your life.

How do you realize ‘real’ values?
Begin by understanding
That life is not an externality.
Life is what goes on inside of you.
Your inner restlessness
Is seeking rest and repose.
Your fear and insecurity
Is in need of assurance and strength.
Your emotional knots
Need release and expression.
Your hatred is unable to see love.
And your lack of trust is a poverty of faith.

Your desire to own
And be known, recognized and validated
Is a search for fulfilment.
None of these values
Can be mined from the world.
They cannot be purchased in a market.
They cannot be acquired via accomplishment.
They must be self-generated.
The fount of life is within you
It is you who creates
And sustains your life.
You are the real value.

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A Vision

At the heart of a vision
Is a good that is great.
It’s universal in its hope…
Large and all-encompassing in its fold…
Needed for the times to come.

However, achieving a vision
Is not as simple as wishing for it.
It requires work.
Its work is of inspiring change,
Enlightening… illuminating…
Fighting lazy assumptions,
Defeating doubt, breaking down barriers…
Challenging the status quo…
Questioning, learning, educating…
Fighting battles- some small, some big
But never losing sight
Of that which is worth fighting for.

A vision must be so great
It absorbs all that is small in us…
Our anxieties, our insecurities, our differences…
It must yield capability,
Competence and resilience.
It must ride on its own promise
While knowing well that
Life is inherently a kaleidoscope of contradictions
And that sometimes,
In order to move on
One must accept a temporary compromise.

A vision is corrective.
By design, it will guide you
It will clarify your understanding
And uplift your experiences to wisdom.
It will ensure that you too,
Are transformed
By the power of your own vision.

As you progress in its light
You will leave behind
Your self-interest, your ego, your pride…
Your darkness…
You will be protected in your solitude
(Even if you find yourself devoid of company)
And be freed of the shackles
Your times had bound you to.

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Experience

To know one must experience.
To experience one must know.

To experience anything fully
One must be present…
Observant… Attentive…
Open to feeling…
One must be able to contact life
Deeply; not tangentially.

You must experience abrasion
To know your strength and power.

Only when you feel pain
Will you understand meaning.

You must meet the unfamiliar
Before you get familiar with who you are.

You must experience difficulty
In order to know what is accomplishment.

You must experience differences
Before you come to know love.

Experience is first-hand knowledge.
In and through it you discover
Your profound qualities

All your experiences
Must lead you to a deeper knowledge.
And then…
To superior experiences.

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Reality is Not a Concept

We create concepts
To understand reality.
Yet the real can only be found
Through a direct encounter;
Devoid of all prior learning;
With no filter.

While concepts can pre-determine
And inform our observations
They can also keep us from observing.
To know is to know that
What you know is another’s seeing.
That which doesn’t speak to you is not real.

One may be well-versed with concepts
One may have earned degrees of learning
Yet all such knowledge will one day
Disappear like vapour
If it is not something that has found you
While you were on your quest of the truth.

What then is real?
That state prior to all creation…
The nothingness that precedes
Every idea…every speculation…every thought…
That which stands outside every conceptualisation…
Including this one.

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Blame

If blame were a means
Of yielding remorse, realization
And then correction,
We all would’ve achieved an ideal world…
We wouldn’t be living
With old wounds still festering

Blame can only
Pin a problem to a person;
It cannot help him resolve it.
All he will see is that
For all that went wrong
It was he who was blamed.

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Do You Have the Time?

What have we done with time–
Pathologically molested it!
It holds us now
In its crumpled bosom
Perpetually agitated.
In a curious twist of irony
Whatever man has tried to control
Has in turn, controlled him.

We stand today
Beggared
Impoverished of time
Given that we chose
Consumption over contentment
Money over wealth
Productivity over art
Activity over stillness.

Seeing you today–
So glorious… so beautiful…
Pausing to admire you–
Was a gift…
Precious… momentary…
I had to rush though–
‘Now’ had fallen off a cliff
Pushed over by ‘You’ll-be-late!’