Appearances are not the Truth
And the Truth is evident, not apparent.
Know the difference.
Courage may not always look grand
It often keeps its distance from the grandiosity of gesture.
Let it remain invisible.
Your real achievements often go unnoticed.
Awards are intended to legitimise the awarder.
Their place is on a shelf; yours, in life.
You’re educated to acquire special skills
Yet all real work happens through surrender and prayer.
Give up all ideas of yourself.
Pornography isn’t confined
To the sexual.
In fact, it has become more pervasive
Than we care to admit.
It’s apparent in the way
We intercourse with life in general.
In man’s world
Everything must be
On a perpetual high-
Growth, profit, success
Romance, attention, appearance-
All must be managed, promised and pursued.
Effect is packaged as impact.
Titillation is now a form of power.
Popularity is an achievement.
Self-gratification is the road to happiness
Seduction is success
And attention is capital.
Pornography in essence
Is a redrawing
Of gaze and glimpse.
It’s a perversion
Of desire and touch.
And a degradation and decimation
Of what makes us human.
In passing time
Observe an occurrence:
A curve…a refraction…
A twist…an aberration…
A connection…a concealment…
Stretch its dimensions
Towards the observer.
Perceive it in pure light
Without an ambience of knowledge.
Learn about it
By learning from it.
Trust it to take you
Where it must now live…
In the form of a new thing;
In the marketplace;
As an idea;
As a suggestion;
As a question;
As a voice
Or, as pure courage.
Pause…
Because a pause creates beauty
And this creation of beauty
Is not designed action
It is a reflection in stillness.
What a paradox it is
That in order
To apprehend life’s complexity
The simplest act of cessation is sufficient
Just as much as it is necessary.
A pause
Is a way to pay respect
To the doer, the doing and the done
It’s a constraint you put
On the excessive and the unnecessary.
A pause
Is a form of acknowledgement
That conveyance
Is an action of many forces
And that intention is one such force.
A pause is power
The ultimate form of self-control
A recognition of
What fails in success
And what succeeds in failure.
Originality is good.
The true is good.
The honest is good.
To surrender the material
At the altar of the spiritual
Is good
Self-awareness is good.
To love is good.
Correct knowledge is good.
To overcome weakness is good.
Courage is good.
To adapt to change
But to remain unchanged by it
Is good.
To relate with care is good.
To sustain the good is good.
How does one be
Without striving to be ‘a better something’?
I’m coming to see
That ‘better’ is an illusion.
But if I don’t pursue the better
What do I have to my merit?
And if I don’t have any merit
What do I call my own?
And without having something
To call my own, what belongs to me?
To whom do I belong?
Where do I belong?
To no one? To all?
To nowhere? To everywhere?
How does one feel complete
Without ownership?
How does one feel fulfilled
Without achievement or acquisition?
How does one know love
Without attachment?
How does one know fullness
When one feels emptiness?
How?
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.
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.
In polarities we seek
Our certainties
We feel that knowledge
Refers to a position
We must occupy.
But knowing is an action
Involving, first and foremost
An arrival to a no-man’s land
Standing in the field of uncertainty
Belonging to nothing
And no one in particular…
Standing on a piece of ground
Solid enough to hold
The weight of your being.
You listen…
Because you know
You know nothing
You receive
Because you’re asking.
The fact of the matter is
That our ignorance
Is vaster than anything
We’ve come to know
And so will it always be.
So fundamental
Is ignorance to our beings
That it thinks
That knowledge must be an acquisition
A position…a rank…an accomplishment.
Something it can use
To decorate itself.
The irony is-
The more you claim to know
The less you do.
To break
Is to collapse
It is to be shattered in pieces;
To be wounded by your own anger.
All external battles
Are fought internally
Leaving you to question
Was it really worth it?
Will this thing within me
Now wounded, now broken
Survive?
Or will it die?
The change that is to come
Is antithetical to what is
Continuity is not life’s virtue
Defiance is.
Death is not
The end of life
But the end
Of what is no longer life.
Bid adieu
To what is not
And say hello
To what is.
Life is not a charming story
Of escapisms
Life is an openness
To being, feeling and dying.
Bury the dead
Nurture the living
Move on. Move forward.
What has survived, must be lived.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 