Manifesto
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.
Presence
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.
In Reflection
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
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.
Right now
Time, our common inheritance, is given to us bit by bit, in instalments. It is apprehended as the gap between two experiences or two memories. We experience time in our experience of having moved forward, or in having left behind an experience or in having grown. It is in the growth of our consciousness that we experience time. And although it is our common gift, we differ in the way we experience time…in what we choose to do with it. For some, time is the dull, aching persistence of memory. For others, it’s marked by the chase of a desire for an imagined future. Our being is often torn between our past and our worries or hopes for the future.
Our experience of time is dependent upon the quality, quantity and pre-occupations of our thoughts. The more the thoughts and the more they revolve around your self and your plans, the more you will stand defeated. The rich rewards time yields can never be claimed by one who is under the captivity of his/her own mind. They can only be reaped by those who are free of their past and have faith in a yet unseen future. This faith allows them to live without fear-in the here and the now.
We swim through life in a sea of eternity. The past, present and future are our mental constructs; they have no basis in reality. We simply move from the present to the present, bit-by-bit. We grow, or at least we ought to, in our ability to grasp the wealth of a single moment. Right now is all I am bequeathed. Right now is all that I have.
My grand ideas keep me from appreciating the little. I equate ‘more’ with ‘more’. I’m unable to see that in the dimension of time, a breadth of accomplishment lies in the depth of a moment. Is it possible that in this moment of a single breath, I accomplish all that I must accomplish. In wanting something more than what this moment is offering me, am I not missing something? What is a year after all, if not an exponential day? And what is a day, if not an exponential hour? And what is an hour, if not an exponential minute?
The question then should be : How do I raise the power of my present? The only way to raise the power of the present is to LIVE IN IT. Living in the present requires that we be free of worry and entrenched in faith. The faithless move from one enchantment to the next, foolishly bypassing the miracles of their own lives. Unable to see the value in their existence as it is, they long for another. In their longing, plans and journeys are made, things are acquired and positions sought. They wait for that moment when they will taste the times they long for, looking down in irritation at the present that seems so indifferent and ordinary. They often talk about ‘killing’ time, rather than ‘living’ it. To have faith, is to awaken to the power of both- REASON and INTUITION. A person of faith knows that he has all that he needs to ride heroically on this moment. It’s not wiled away in longing, but befriended through an exchange of capabilities. The moments are lived as a celebration; they’re not wasted in planning a celebration. The wise know that there is nothing to be gained in life, that life-in this moment- is the gain itself.
Right now-
I realized
Cannot be met
With charming words
It will meet you only in silence.
Right now-
Wants and desires
An immediate and intense union
A disappearance of two
And the appearance of the one.
Right now-
Refuses to conform
To the conventional, the old
Where the world ‘exists’ in a long-dead relationship
Between subject and predicate.
Right now-
I am worthless in what I know and possess
But valuable (I sense)
In my sheer presence
Beggared of all accumulated wealth.
Right now-
I am humbled
By this lack of basic ability
To share with you
The gift of the new.
Right now-
I realize
I shall have to make do
With greeting cards and amusing knick-knacks
To convey fossilized feelings to you.
Right now-
I appreciate the distance between us
Hoping that wherever you are
You are alone, immersed in your own presence
Receiving this gift that I lack the ability to give.
Poem
What is a poem
if not a reflection
of the mystery of my being…
How can I claim authorship
or even meaningful intent
When my own existence
is as momentary
as a drawing in still waters.
Living on a prayer
I breathe who breathes
I am one, I am all
In the span of one breath
I rise and I fall.
There’s nothing I am
There’s nothing I’m not
I come into being
From the womb of your thought.
In your heart I exist
As longing, as pain
For every loss of illusion
I stand as your gain.
When clouded by darkness
Having lost sight of trust and love
Keep your feet on the ground
And your gaze above.
This and That
For something to be this
there’s got to be that
For all that is good
there’s got to be bad
The more you try to hide
the more you show
In order to have
you’ve got to let go
Seemingly far away
when measured from what’s near
Strength only emerges
in the face of fear
For everything I’ll know
there are two things I won’t
So the more I know
the more I don’t.
Anonymous
I could not have written
All that I seem to have written
Considering
I understand more fully
‘my own thoughts’
Long after
The pen has traced
Their smooth moonwalk.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 