How great is life
In the possibilities it holds!
Enabled alike in blindness and vision
Or in richness and poverty
Even so in vice and virtue
And in love and hate.
Life is not a road
It’s a vast presence
A space within which we stand
Blindfolded, but supported
Allowed only to imagine
And live out the absurdities
Of our own ideas.
It was a three-hour drive that drove us.
A six-pack
inert
Silent in thought
and throbbing in pulse
Each of us immersed
in a reality of our own
Wombed together
in a pregnant pause
We each emerged a little
in clumsy attempts to connect
Islands adrift
In a sea of consciousness
Aware
but unknowing
Too close for comfort
Yet far away…
None of us had anything to say.
3:15pm:
I lie down for a nap.
Thoughts are racing in my head.
They fight each other
One must emerge as the winner-
The most powerful thought-
The one endowed with most reason…
The fight in mind should settle it
Once and for all.
I shut my eyes
I consciously step away from the arena.
Their argument becomes dimmer as I walk away…
When the noises become faint
I slip into bliss…
4:20pm:
I’m up…
The thoughts are now a memory.
Time transported me into the future.
Having left thought behind
I feel older, wiser
more mature.
This is the way to grow:
This is the way to win:
Yes, thoughts will enter
And claim your space
Allow them to fight out their dialectical destiny.
Stand up
Walk away
Realize that
The attainment you seek
Doesn’t depend on a thought’s victory.
“Does love exist,” she asked
“Expectations unmet
And feelings are held on to closely
On a short leash…
And what about love?
Love stays in my head
Not my heart
It lives on as a concept
It seldom, if ever
Enters my aching heart
Does it exist? Anywhere?
And should it exist?
My relationships are but a transaction
Held together precariously
By a concept called ‘duty’.
What makes ‘duty’ more dear than love?
Perhaps because I sees that everybody else thinks so…
Love is this fluid, uncontrollable ache
Love knows no partiality
It reveals all
And that’s the scary part
That in love
I will be seen in my nakedness
My skin will lie before you
In all its blemishes
My aching heart will
with innate gravity and force
Drop me to unimaginable lows
I will long for you and your deliverance
With no certainty ever
That I shall be received by the open arms of your own longing
Love can just about assure me of two mercies:
Hope and Faith.
But it is duty that’s more prudent,
more pragmatic
It helps me float over the ache
And it is Duty that pays the bills
For all those distractions
That fill up my space and time
And love continues to live on
In my head
As a concept.
And because it does
there are expectations unmet
And feelings restrained.”
Ignorance has a wide circle of friends
Ignorance has tremendous influence
It draws me to people
And people to me
Our common pretense, our common act
We come together in what we lack
Or so we say always believing
It’s through another’s eyes I may understand my seeing
There’s no place among friends for him who knows
It’s your ignorance, your inadequacy that opens up doors
It’s Understanding though that has afforded me this insight
That Ignorance need not be wrong, it can be very right
Especially when you need some friends
Understand that you’re better of with Ignorance.
Our economic system is flawed.
Our political system is flawed.
Our education system is flawed.
Our society is flawed.
Because they thrive on falsehood
They need lies for profit, for leverage
And in and through their design
All work is sacrilegious and a curse.
Poverty is immanent in wealth
We only graduate in degrees of ignorance
And man is bound to man in a wretched dependency.
The root of all this is the individual
Fallen from Grace
He seeks his Self
He tries to know who he is
By being who he’s not (a sum of different parts).
Filled with deluded notions of grandeur
He procures. He makes. He sells.
And he is celebrated for the profit he makes.
In this blinding business of generating profit
He is left with sight, but loses his power to perceive.
With such an impairment
He can find worldly sustenance only through profit
He woos gain
And fears loss
He is wide in mirth
But shrivelled in sorrow
He wants only part of what life has to offer
He has no faith in the whole.
And the Truth cannot be anything but whole
The Truth Is.
It need not be created
The Truth cannot be measured by numbers or degrees
It is all-pervading and all-embracing.
Truth does not grow
It does not favour
the rich over the poor
the strong over the weak
the haves over the have-nots.
Infallible in its system
It awaits our homecoming
If only man could find solace
in the knowledge that it’s okay to not know…
And simply accept his being
Forego the contrivances of “who” or “what”.
And celebrate am-ness…
Then Truth would speak
And Truth would need
That which only Truth can give
Truth would ask
And Truth would answer
And Truth would accept
What Truth had made.
I picked up the glass of water
A ring of residue remained
I wiped the surface
The table remained
I took away the table
The room remained
I took away the room
Its memory remained
I took away memory
Nothing remained.
Nothing had been there all along.
Cleanse me of all affectations
Move away the dark clouds
So that I may see a clear blue sky
And know
Through such a seeing
That I now stand face-to-face
with a truer reflection of me.
Help me deny meaning
To the sound of my thoughts
And the words of my speech
So that I may understand
That these sounds belong not to me
But are the lyrical oracle
Of the whispering wind.
Reveal to me that my laughter
Is but the human expression
Of a gurgling, falling stream
That embraces every stubborn rock
With good humor, born from inherent faith
A knowing that no rock can stop
The powerful current of overflowing joy.
When I see before me
A sprightly bed of beaming yellow flowers
Do not fail to remind me
That although my eyes see
The yellow-ness of the flowers
It is really the flowers seeing
Their beautiful brightness through me.
And then
Why must I fear my desires
Or suffer them as a perversion
When in truth
They are the fire
Whose flames rapidly rise
In eternal longing of the highest virtue.
Lead me to realize
That the essence of my conflicts
Lies in my having made true
The non-existent, the false
The personal, the ‘me’
And that I have lived
In severance and in denial of the true.
I have fashioned myself
From the gift of your senses
And called them ‘mine’
But I exist not
Apart from you-
O Fire, Earth, Wind, Sea and Sky
I exist as you and for you.
The mind is movement
perceived by the virtue of stillness
It is an influent
whose ultimate source
and ultimate end
is a mystery.
Watch then, you
with the eyes of your soul
its spectre of affections:
of fear and sorrow
of longing and ecstasy.
And even though
in its search for truth
it makes things true
Distance its truth
as one would a lie
And marvel at its virtuosity.
Appreciate it
As you would appreciate a Monet
not just for an enchanting picture painted
but also for seeking to understand
the illuminating and glorious
light of the day.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 