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.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

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?”

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Time and Eternity

Time is so much more
Than that minute of regret
Or that hour of pain
Or that day of abandon and escape
Or those weeks of waiting
Or those months of grief
Or those years of relentless struggle.

Time can move the fixated
It can change the adamant
It can correct the incorrigible
It can improve… or it can worsen
It can enrich… and also impoverish
It can reverse fortunes
And make us experience impermanence

And yet, in and through
Our solitary moments
Our silences
Our pauses
Our deep work
Or our intense lovemaking
It can be our exit to eternity.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Questions That Have No Answers

In truth, not every question
Can be readily answered.
There are things that lie
Beyond the frontiers of our knowing.
We appear to hold the reins
Of our lives
But the paths we take
Seem to be laid for us.
We come to each moment
Carrying the impressions and scars
Of many lifetimes.
Our wants, our hurt and our pain
Become our answers; our reason.

But were you to arrive
To this moment
With a new question
(Not rooted in your pain)
It would be met
With a disconcerting silence.
The reins of your life
Would still be held by you
The path too would still
Be laid out for you
But now the question
Would free you from the doing.
For the doing
Would no longer be the answer.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

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.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Consciously Die

Leave behind and let go of past events.
Leave behind your memories of shame or defeat.
Leave behind all the bitterness.
Leave behind the pain of disrespect.
Leave behind others’ opinions.
Leave behind your failures.
Also leave behind your successes.
Leave behind your conditioning.
Leave behind all that is over.

Lighten the load. Drop the sack.
Look ahead. Stop turning back.
Be grateful for yet another chance
To start over…to be renewed.
Consciously die to the old.
In order to rediscover your gold.
Recreate your life. Pick yourself up.
There’s a reason why you’re still here.
Leave behind what’s gone. Start with what’s near.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

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.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Simplicity

If there was to be
A hierarchy of values
Simplicity would be
The highest of all.

For in simple thoughts
And through simple actions
One can be thoughtful,
Economical and intentional
In their smallest gestures.

Simplicity takes immense courage.
It makes one resolute.
For to fall into temptation is easy
And then to pretend that these temptations
Are necessary– is a limitation
Of consciousness.

Simplicity opens up ways
It becomes an instrument of providence.
It surmounts problems easily
And allows you to exist
In a vast expanse of possibilities.
Nothing is a threat.
Nothing can destabilize you
For you stand on the most stable of grounds.

Love flows out of you naturally
For the barriers to love
Have not been created.
You simply had no need
For them in your life.

You’re able to accept life
On its terms and yet
Not be changed by it.

You’re able to surrender
And yet not give up trying.

You’re able to live in the midst of differences
With appreciation and not indifference.

You belong to no one
Because you belong to all.
And this need not be uttered…
For to utter something
Is to make it a lie.
It is to doom it to sure death.
It is to make a profound truth
An edifice… to push it out of your heart
And expose it to the delusions of your mind.

Simplicity, in essence, is silence.
It is to be
Without being concerned
About how to be.