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.
Your Life is Your Gift
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.
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.
Liberate Yourself
Liberate yourself
From the patterns of the mind
From self-doubt, worry and circuitous thought.
The mind is a self-enclosed space
It won’t take you anywhere
Beyond the illusions and stories it creates.
Liberate yourself
From a false education
That makes you believe the myth
Of The Powerful, The Successful,
The Great and the Best
And tells you that you must serve
These false Gods.
Liberate yourself
From petty desires…from hunger
Free of desire and greed,
you will commit no wrong.
The search for validation
Is the most regressive thing
For the spiritually awakened.
Liberate yourself
For no God, no Guru,
No rock concert, no art
No currency, no stock market
No institution, no government…
Nothing created by the mind of man
Can liberate you.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 