What absences do you feel?
What do you feel
Is missing from your life?
What presences are you ignoring?
What are you refusing to see
That patiently awaits your attention?
While life must be lived
And its pains and pleasures experienced;
Life’s beauty lies in being read
In being noticed and beheld.
Knowledge is a gain
That comes to those
Who sincerely seek it.
Books hold stories, theories
And philosophies.
On their own
They’re not knowledge.
Experiences too,
Are granted to all
But on their own
They don’t yield knowledge.
Knowledge is an invocation.
For knowledge to enlighten
There must first be
An awareness of darkness.
There must be acceptance
That one does not know.
There must be a question…
There must be wonder…
There must be the recognition
That Existence is the greatest teacher
But to Existence one must go.
She will not come to you
At a scheduled hour.
Have you ever wondered
What the trees know?
Or the wind?
Or waters that travel
Fearlessly across lands
To reach the vastness of the ocean?
What knowledge do they hold?
What knowledge holds them?
And do they ‘know’ about it?
Or is their knowledge of a different type?
Must knowledge be about mastery?
Does its value lie in its saleability?
What value does understanding have?
Must we know how to survive above all?
Or, must we know what it means to give
And how to sacrifice, and how to die
For the sake of something greater?
That is what is worthy of seeking
How the ordinary is so rich
With promise; seemingly simple
Yet so phenomenal.
So self-contained and yet so giving.
So weak, yet so strong.
Knowledge is important
So that you don’t waste your life becoming
That which you never were.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It takes time to build
A reputation, a life, an identity
Yet time holds little regard
For your version of reality.
In a single brutal stroke
It can level down to the ground
All your structures and your plans
All gone…nothing to be found.
What do you turn to then?
Repentance, remorse, restitution or prayer?
Or are you grateful that
Though everything is lost, you’re still there.
You’ve done it before
So you know that you can do it again
With grit and determination
You’ll rebuild your life from zero to ten.
But what is loss trying to teach you?
And are you ready to learn?
That no matter what distance you cover
Over time, you will return.
Cling not to your honours and riches
For they delude you and make you forget
That the unreality you celebrate today
Is time lost, that you will regret.
So, what must we do with our time–
How do we rise above its drift?
Make it an offering to an ideal
Remember that your life is your gift.
More is manmade
More is artifice
More stems from insecurity
More is insincere
More is egoistic
More is competitive
More is useless
More is a waste
More destroys
We don’t need more for a good life
More things, more wealth
More performance, more people
More fame, more recognition
More ideas, more progress
More work, more effort
More politics, more divisions
More weapons, more war…
We need
The simplicity to be just enough
The greatness to appreciate the small
The faith to surrender to the unknown
The education to become instrumental
Not self-serving
The ambition to transcend desire
Not pursue it
The wisdom to love
What we are blessed with
The courage to be authentic
Not delusory
The humility to receive
The generosity to give…
More is not the way to create value
The creation of value requires judgment
And judgment requires stillness… a pause
An intermission between action and reaction
In that space better sense prevails
In that space value is understood.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 