When Will Wisdom Come?

When will wisdom come?
When you have lived a life
Of many detours…and many turns?
Or when unimpressed
With the map of the world
You reach for the stars?
Or when reality makes demands on you
But you leave to live your dream?

When will wisdom come?
When you walk the tried and tested path
Laid down by those who walked before?
Or when you seek recourse in religion
To be saved from a pervasive evil?
Or, as a pledge to the highest in humanity
You stay non-violent…
And hurt no one.

But is wisdom the child of intent?
Or the joy of escape?
Or the reward for resolve?
Or the unleashing of wild passions?
Or, is it a light that beams through you
When you have discovered
Along the way
How to be happy.

Space in the City

Silence is a magnetic field
Created by a repulsion
To noise.

I have lived in city spaces
Where noisy roads
Are neighbours to islands of calm
Found in temples or parks…
Or in the little lane
That makes a quick exit
From a busy street.
Or in the silences held in homes
Where the sound of utensils in the kitchen
Or a pressure cooker whistling
Are the only sounds that tell you
That a family resides there.

The city with its speed and noise
Is ironically the providence you need
To cultivate your own field of silence.

Life Experiences

There’s a breeze
That gently moves my curtain
Every afternoon.
The day is slower…
Calmer…
I think to myself–
Grateful for this solitude–
These are the experiences of being
That I wish to carry with me.

Being Capable of Love

Child,
Not everyone you meet
Will do you good
Not everyone you meet
Will be sincere
Not everyone you meet
Will love you as perfection.
Your ideas of love
May not easily be fulfilled.

Love has many different faces
From the ugly to the sublime.
Love resists being contained
Within narrow definitions.
And yet it needs boundaries…
Otherwise, it remains doomed as hate.
Love must be understood
Through the instruments of love
Patience, attention, trust and faith.

Sometimes love is received.
At other times, often more challenging,
It needs to be given.

When Fiction is Educated to Become Fact

Without the other

Would ‘I’ ever know myself?

Without sorrow

Would ‘I’ ever grow?

Without disillusionment

Would ‘I’ ever transcend desire?

Without love

Would ‘I’ have the wisdom to endure?

Without experience

Would ‘I’ know what it means to be?

Indviduality is fiction

Educated by longing, suffering and desire to become fact.

The Existing Clock

There’s a clock in my home

That shows a different time.

It seems to have its own pace

It works on a different rhythm.

If I had to consult the other clocks

They’d say it does not work.

They would recommend repair

Or a replacement.

After all the job of a clock 

Is to work “round the clock”

And unfailingly show us the right time.

I don’t know why I haven’t done it yet…

Why I haven’t repaired or replaced it…

“There are better clocks out there,” they say.

I know. But my knowing 

Doesn’t want to act on its knowledge.

I like it being wrong.

I like that it shows me a different time.

I like that it is out of sync and free.

It makes me smile.

The clock does work

Just not in the way it’s supposed to.

What is the Heart Afraid of?

Why is the heart afraid
Of darkness?
Why is the heart afraid
Of the unknown?
Why is the heart afraid
To take chances?

What does it stand to lose
By challenging existence?
Will it lose its gratitude?
Wisdom?
Restraint?
Will it lose a grip on life itself?

But what is life?
Is it the freedom to be?
The freedom to make-believe?
Is it suffering?
An entanglement?
Or an illusion?

How strange it is
That life cannot be known.
It’s a mystery.
It can only be lived.
It can only be experienced.
Sometimes in the light; sometimes in darkness.

Sometimes in action;
Sometimes in passivity.
Sometimes in isolation;
Sometimes in longing.
Sometimes desiring an end;
Sometimes an eternal continuity.

The heart is afraid
Because it must after all,
Venture into life alone and bravely.
Without the cleverness of thought.
It must come to see that it doesn’t need architecture;
That it exists in the realm of surrender and possibility.

Guilt

Guilt is dark. It entraps you.
It’s a shadow that engulfs you.
You can ignore it
But it follows you everywhere.
The eternal accompaniment
To expectations pinned on you.

But which you?
The one that thinks, feels, senses…
The jeeva.
Forever tormented into making a choice
And then being doomed
For having made it.

To conquer this induced guilt
One must transcend conditional relationships
That no longer nurture.
Isolation then is not a punishment
But a necessary outcome of growth.
Emotionalism must never pretend to be true emotion.

In a world obsessed with fictions
Persist in your search for the real.
Beyond name and form
Seek truth. Seek light.
Walk out of the cave.
Guilt is dark. It entraps you.

The Cross “I” Bear

The weight of an “I”
is too much
to bear for a lifetime.
An aberration of the self,
the “I” wishes to become everything
it is ignorant of being.

“I” is the first violation
of the principle of the self,
which is that: it is the self
only when it is not for the self.
Yet we live our lives
in perpetual want.

With every purchase
we invest in our poverty.
With every relationship
we extend the misery of our longing.
With every prayer for protection
we chip away our faith.

The “I” is a myth
for what it means
to be human.
A being in search of
what it means to simply be-
Alive. Existing. Discovering.

The University of Life and Death

Go from darkness into light
From chronic entanglement and bondage
Into a temporary freedom.
From chasing delusions
To seeing the truth.
Transition. Move on.
And then return.

For death is not the place for the living
And life has no use for the dead.
Return with the light
Learn to see the divine in the human.
Live once more, if need be
Bound within a web of relationships
But now exist in eternal freedom.

We are here because
We are yet to learn the lessons
That we had neither the intelligence
Nor the maturity to understand
In this university, experiences teach you
Imperfection was never the problem
Perfection was never the need.