Posted on by solangesuri2015

What We Are

Why are we so enamoured
By the big, the great, the moneyed,
The glamorous and the extraordinary?

And why does the small
Get dismissed, abused, or exploited?
Or be seen as something to
Be brought under our command?
Why is it subject to our derision?

Why have our thoughts been schooled
To seek out advantage, grow big and
Become great or dominating?

Why has modern man failed to assess
How he truly measures against existence?
Instead, by way of brute force
Or coercion, or war, or by way of competition
He makes every effort to overextend himself.
He toils hard to become the greatness
That he’s been educated to admire.

Are our problems rooted in this inability
To know who we are
And in compensating that fundamental ignorance
By becoming who we imagine we should be?

All that we have tried to control and domineer
All the small things that we thought
That on their own didn’t matter-
Are now through their disappearance
Threatening our own existence.

The solution isn’t to come up
With some great invention
Or some even smarter technology
The solution lies in recognising
That we exist in and because of our relationships.
Relationships sustain life.

Life cannot be controlled
It certainly cannot be grasped
Through a course of study.
And it cannot be lived well
Merely by winning advantages over others;
Or by accumulating badges and privileges.

Happiness is not the reward of a pursuit
To be happy is to be well-ordered in mind
It is to be rooted in reality
It is to know that one already has
What one imagines one needs to find.

It is to look at life with softness
It is to contact the world
not to acquire but to give.
Each is by design-
Capable and sufficient.

Before we set out to become
More than what we presently are
We must seek to understand
What we are
As we are.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

The Marriage of Thought and Action

Thought, it thinks that it knows
And that it is clever…
And creative and intelligent…
And two steps ahead of action
And can easily hoodwink it.

And so, it has become ordinary
To say one thing
And do quite the opposite.
Our thoughts and actions
Have come to live separate lives.

Our thoughts are no longer
Loving or respectful…
Because they no longer feel the need
To descend to action
And foster a real relationship with life.

While thought is energy that inspires action
It can only do so when it has the heart
To be subsumed by the action of surrender;
Its claim to authority being true
On the condition it is willing to surrender it.

After all, one can’t think one’s way
Out of the morass of existence
It must be walked through
Its difficulties must be experienced
At all dimensions of our being.

If not committed to taking a form through action
Thought quickly becomes a shroud
Covering all that has died within us
Our truth, Our Morality, Our agency
Our awareness of who we truly are.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

The Wrong Questions

There is a problem
With asking the wrong questions-
You are given the wrong answers.

To what may have been the answer
To the question of how to live this life
The world stands before us-
Our mistaken understanding of life as a pursuit.

With poisoned air and drying lakes
And rivers that no longer flow with joy
Our dysfunctional societies (but our functional apps)-
Our intelligence has foolishly destroyed the intelligent.

Our satanic violence and our violent ambitions
Our greed, and our theft of that which sustains life
Our escapes now dependent on our simulated realities-
We decimate providence to establish our supremacy….

We’re now asking the (wrong) question
Of what’s next… of what we should become
But we’re still clueless about
What understanding…. what faith it takes
To simply be.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

To Be is not To Be

I have no expectations
From my relationships
Other than integrity
–An integrity that needs no justification.

I distrust tall claims
Of love and support
Of intensity and eternity
I find them unnecessary and performative.

To be there for another
Requires no art, no utterance
If you are in a relationship
You are–for better or for worse–already there.

So many relationships disintegrate
Because promises made were unkept.
Over the course of weeks, months and years
Love once proclaimed, now remains a faint echo.

Intimacy, a deepening, an anchoring…
These are the fruits of a simple tree
That weathers all weathers
And lives through many a changing season.

To be is to stand apart
From all imagination and all make-believe
To freely exist in between the lines
To slip out of the captivity of a script.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Suffering

The broken arm
The broken leg
The broken heart
The broken dreams

The brutal separation
The unmet expectations
The shattered myth
The unfulfilled desires

The empty hour
The vacant days
The crushing disappointment
The weight of disillusionment

Suffering takes on many forms.

Isn’t it our common condition?
Isn’t it a reminder to us all
That our attachments will yield
Nothing but sorrow?

That we must let go
Of all our clinging
And dwell not in misery
But set foot towards a higher dimension.

That we must walk alone
In pain, but liberated
Fully free to experience our sorrow
So that we are free from suffering it.

The morning breeze caresses me gently. It is nonchalant.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Sometimes You Wonder…

Sometimes you wonder
About all that you’ve accumulated
To your soul
What will happen to it all
After you’ve gone?
Where will it go?
All the stuff?
All that matter…?
All that you think matters…?
What happens to it….?
Isn’t it also a sort of living responsibility
To give it all away?
To empty yourself before you go?

Who will I give my memories to?
…Perhaps those whom I create them with.
And my thoughts?
May they henceforth only be a prayer
And may they live on
In the lives of others
As blessings received, unasked for.
What about my hurt and my pain?
To what will they transform?
Let them remain absorbed in silence
And become the compassion and beauty
That inspires and powers all art.

Sometimes you wonder
To this eventuality of death
What matters? What doesn’t?
Does nothing matter?
Does everything matter?
What promises does time keep?
Fulfilment? Knowledge? Self-discovery?
Perhaps these are never the outcome
Of a living process…
Perhaps fulfilment, knowledge and self-discovery
Exist eternally and are right here, right now.
In time, matter can only appear and disappear.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

Understanding

True achievement lies
In dissolving all achievements
So that you are left
With a beginner’s mind…

I’m coming to see
That the most valuable
Part of my life
Are moments of silence and solitude.

There was a time
I saw them as empty…
Something that I must fill up
With something meaningful.

Today, I realize
Nothing apart from
My sheer existence
Has any meaning.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

All That We Waste

We waste our mental energies
Worrying disproportionately of things
That are of little consequence;
Or which cannot be undone by our doing.

We waste our time
Trying to become someone other than we are
Thinking that our happiness lies elsewhere
And must be sought, or conquered…or strived for.

We waste our lives
Thinking that our personal stories matter
Unaware that with a name and an identity
Our existence is a life created by a surrogate self.

We waste our relationships
Expecting from them a life
We’re unable to give ourselves.
Seeking fulfilment without putting our love to work.

We waste our education
By stopping the process of learning
Thinking of it as a badge of accomplishment
And not as a living aspect that needs to be nurtured.

We waste our passions
By corrupting their purpose
Relegating the highest in us
To deliver to us our lowest, most basic goals.

We waste our well of emotions
By treating it like a dump
For our petty fears, anxieties and our hatred
We’re no longer able to taste their sweetness.

We squander away our spirit
Because we mistake its silence for its absence
Unable to understand how simple stillness
Can convey us from confusion to clarity.

Is it any surprise therefore,
That our land, our trees, our waters, our air
Our communities, our society, our culture
Also lie wasted?

Posted on by solangesuri2015

We’re All Influencers

We’re all influencers
To the extent
That the things that we say and do…
And the way that we are…
Live on in the memory of others,
And find continuity and new expression
In the choices they make through their lives.

The decision to no longer hide the greys
In your hair, or to no longer be ashamed
Of a more rounded body…
Or the ability to laugh at yourself…
Or in what you consider to be
The warmth of a home…
Or even the names you give to your children…

All of these are the traces
Of a lasting impression made on us.
But not all of us is someone else…
There is something about us that belongs to us alone.
And the real influence you will have
Is in the way you are
Uniquely you.

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!