The Moment of Dawn

This day when the world over people are celebrating the birth of the messenger of peace and love, I thought I would share a gem of a story I found among the other priceless gems that make up ‘Like a Flowing River’ by Paulo Coelho.

The Moment of Dawn

During the World Economic Forum at Davos, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, Shimon Peres, told the following story.

A Rabbi gathered together his students and asked them:

“How do we know the exact moment when night ends and day begins?”

When it’s light enough to tell a sheep form a dog,” said one boy.

Another student said: “No, when it’s light enough to tell an olive tree from a fig tree.”

“No, that’s not a good definition either.”

“Well, what’s the right answer?” asked the boys.

And the Rabbi said:

“When a stranger approaches, and we think he is our brother, and all conflicts disappear, that is the moment when night ends and day begins.”

My Lord calls to me

My Lord calls to me
in the early morning light
‘kuhu-kuhu’ she sings
in joyous dulcet tones.

My Lord enfolds me
in the early morning mist,
ethereal and uplifting
like mother’s love.

My Lord sings to me
from the violin’s bow,
gliding on the strings
in heartrending melody.

My Lord looks at me
from beggar-child eyes
in desperate hope,
for alms, for love.

My Lord comes to me
in hands that help,
voices that comfort,
and hearts that hug.

My Lord whispers to me
amid the clamour of worship,
“Be still. Just be. ”
“I am in the silence”.

Look ! This is Love

----- poem by Rumi, Sufi saint -----

Oh, if a tree could wander
   and move with foot and wings!
It would not suffer the axe blows
   and not the pain of saws!
For would the sun not wander
   away in every night ?
How could at every morning
   the world be lighted up?
And if the ocean's water
   would not rise to the sky,
How would the plants be quickened
   by streams and gentle rain?
The drop that left its homeland,
   the sea, and then returned ?
It found an oyster waiting
   and grew into a pearl.
Did Yusaf not leave his father,
   in grief and tears and despair?
Did he not, by such a journey,
   gain kingdom and fortune wide?
Did not the Prophet travel
   to far Medina, friend?
And there he found a new kingdom
   and ruled a hundred lands.
You lack a foot to travel?
   Then journey into yourself!
And like a mine of rubies
   receive the sunbeams' print!
Out of yourself ! such a journey
   will lead you to your self,
It leads to transformation
   of dust into pure gold!

- Rumi

Beyond labels

I am a human being who writes. This insight flashed within me one day while I was in the shower. Aaahhh! Warm water on bare body, great source of inspiration :))) But I decided to follow the thought further. I am a human being who sings in the shower, who has a job, parents, siblings, friends, who cooks and gardens, got a surgery scar on the back, black hair and black eyes. And then it dawned on me that these are all external appellations. That is, even if all these details change, 'I' remain essentially the same. Eg, if I were to lose my job, my experience of life might alter slightly, I might be hard up for money and might get a bit stressed, but the core of me, my essence will not change. Neither will it change if I stopped going to church and started visiting temples or doing the namaaz. Or if I lost my old set of friends and got myself another. These labels that the world puts upon us adheres to us so much and we start identifying ourselves with them so totally that we lose sight of our real selves almost completely.

But how do we free ourselves of these labels? I thought let me play around with the language a bit. Instead of saying, I am a wife, sister, friend, Indian, employee, kind-hearted, passionate - I could say, I am married, I have brothers and friends, I was born in India of Indian parents, I have a job, I show kind-heartedness sometimes, mostly I do things with passion. But these and all the other labels that are stuck on me do not even begin describe who I am. Undoubtedly, these lables are useful for practical purposes and are useful for defining the roles that we are required to play. But I can change all or some of these around and still remain quintessentially Me, free of labels and free of the strings and connotations attached to those labels.

So then, who is this Me? Where do I find myself? When I have done away with all appellations, what is left?

I find myself in stillness, when the mind is totally silent, an awareness arises, alert and dynamic, loving and pulsating with life. Sometimes this awareness expands to fill the whole universe, sometimes it is aware of another loving presence, a laughing, rollickingly jolly presence. A comforting, healing awareness whose presence brings Bliss. Then I realise that there is no Me, just the Divine.To be quintessentially me all the time, to be free of the mind's attachment to labels, to be that awareness every moment, now that is the challenge!

The Sound of Trees

----------- excerpted from ‘Krishnamurti to Himself’ by J.Krishnamurti ----------

OJAI, CALIFORNIA

Friday, February 25, 1983

There is a tree by the river and we have been watching it day after day for several weeks when the sun is about to rise. As the sun rises slowly over the horizon, over the trees, this particular tree becomes all of a sudden golden. All the leaves are bright with life and as you watch it as the hours pass by, that tree whose name does not matter – what matters is that beautiful tree – an extraordinary quality seems to spread all over the land, over the river. And as the sun rises a little higher the leaves begin to flutter, to dance. And each hour seems to give to that tree a different quality. Before the sun rises it has a somber feeling, quiet, far away, full of dignity. And as the day begins, the leaves with the light on them dance and give it that peculiar feeling that one has of great beauty. By midday its shadow has deepened and you can sit there protected from the sun, never feeling lonely, with the tree as your companion. As you sit there, there is a relationship of deep abiding security and a freedom that only trees can know.

Towards the evening when the western skies are lit up by the setting sun, the tree gradually becomes somber, dark, closing in on itself. The sky has become red, yellow, green, but the tree remains quiet, hidden, and is resting for the night.

If you establish a relationship with it then you have relationship with mankind. You are responsible then for that tree and for the trees of the world. But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity, with human beings. We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we never really touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the sound that is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, not the breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, the sound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots. You must be extraordinarily sensitive to hear the sound. This sound is not the noise of the world, not the noise of the chattering of the mid, not the vulgarity of human quarrels and human warfare but sound as part of the universe.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on earth. If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature we would never kill an animal for our appetite, we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies. But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds.

This is not sentiment or romantic imagination but a reality of a relationship with everything that lives and moves on the earth. Man has killed millions of whales and is still killing them. All that we derive from their slaughter can be had through other means. But apparently man loves to kill things, the fleeting deer, the marvelous gazelle and the great elephant. We love to kill each other. This killing of other human beings has never stopped throughout the history of man’s life on this earth. If we could, and we must, establish a deep long abiding relationship with nature, with the actual trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass and the fast moving clouds, then we would never slaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever. Organised murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war. We have never said that to kill another human being is the greatest sin on earth.

---------------------------------------- end of excerpt --------------------------------------

.........

I know that He exists.
Somewhere - in Silence -
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.

'Tis an instant's play.
'Tis a fond Ambush -
Just to make Bliss
Earn her own surprise!

But - should the play
Prove piercing earnest -
Should the glee - glaze -
In Death's - stiff - stare -

Would not the fun
Look too expensive!
Would not the jest -
Have crawled too far!

- Emily Dickinson

Life and I

Life has a lovely way of intruding. Here I am happily cruising along, metaphorically sitting and listening to birdsong and watching the sun go down in the azure sky, when life has to intrude. It knocks on your door and when you refuse to open, it breaks the door down and barges in anyway. It's 'lesson time' it seems to say. Time to pull up your socks and tighten that loose belt of yours, it says with a wry smile on its face. So here I am rudely waken up from my somnolence and wading waist deep in lessons, some of which I hope to imbibe one of these days, once I get a quiet moment from crises that is.

"But what's the point?" I say, "of all these lessons, after all I'm gonna die one day, right? And the lessons to be buried with me, unless I write a ruddy book of lessons (hehehe). "

"But that's the whole point" my soul butts in. "I am here to learn lessons and will not be swayed by a fickle mind."

"Ok, ok, but why get bloodied and bruised in the process? I still carry some old battle wounds and they still hurt in the night sometimes."

"That's because you are so darned stubborn and won't learn from the lessons that life throws at you."

"Well, I guess life should just leave me alone then and let me gaze at the stars like I want to"

"But that is where I want to be too, among the stars, if only you would not get so embroiled in the dramas of life. If you wouldn't take each event in life and turn it into a major production, but instead remain detached and look at it from my point of view, then you could be flying all the time. But you have to get stuck into each event and take it so personally and get a mighty inflated ego if it's a 'success' and a badly bruised one if it's a 'failure' and keep swinging from one to the other in a great attempt to keep yourself in the forefront and keep me seperated from the real business of learning lessons."

"But why can't I learn from other people's dramas? Why does it all have to happen to me?"

"Well, you could and you would if you were quiet enough to observe what's going on beneath the surface. Besides, they are here to learn their own lessons, so they attract into their lives dramas that teach them the lessons they wish to learn. Isn't that amazing?"

"Not really, I don't think my father-in-law would agree, lying in hospital with a IV tube into his arm and a tube into his peeing apparatus, both of which he keeps pulling out"

"I guess that's also the reason why he is living so long and his soul's still with his body. If only people would stop resisting what is and stop insisting that life proceed the way they want it to, and wait quietly for their soul to speak to them, they would know what the real purpose of the experience is and then they would then experience infinite peace."

"So, what the lesson that you have come to learn?"

"Connection with the Divine, connection with the Self, connection with Love, which is all the same thing actually."

"...and what is preventing you from learning that?"

"You! With your incessant chatter, your judgements, your insistence of living in the past or the future. Your 'what-ifs' and 'if-onlys', your insatiable desire to be in control all the time. Your inability to accept things as they are and insistence to change them to fit your limited world-view, all these interfere with my connection with divine wisdom, with stillness and my experience of love which is quite different from worldly love."

"Hmmm… you're right, maybe I should be quiet." (Goes into mute mode, at least for now :)

(plagiarised from various sources, notable among them being 'The Power Of Now' by Eckhart Tolle)

Relationships

Here is a wonderful selection of quotes from the wise on all dimensions of relationships.

"So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it." (J. Krishnamurti)

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." (Carl Jung) "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." (Ralph W. Emerson)

"Let me tell you something: If you ever let yourself feel good when people tell you that you're O.K., you are preparing yourself to feel bad when they tell you you're not good. As long as you live to fulfill other people's expectations, you better watch what you wear, how you comb your hair, whether your shoes are polished -- in short, whether you live up to every expectation of theirs. Do you call that sane?" (Anthony de Mello)

"The person on a quest for wisdom and spirituality always has a choice facing him: Is he to live in the way others live in order to please them or is he to live in the way his own standards call for? If he lets them pull him down he loses what has taken him many, many years to develop. Somewhere at some point he must take his stand, must plant his feet and refuse to budge any farther." (Dr. Paul Brunton)

"A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"If a foolish man is associated with a wise man, even all his life, the foolish man will understand truth as little as a spoon understands the taste of soup." (Buddha)

"There is one thing that, more than any other, throws people absolutely off their balance - the thought that you are dependent upon them. This is sure to produce an insolent and domineering manner towards you . . .they soon fancy that they can take liberties with you, and so try to transgress the laws of politeness. This is why there are so few people with whom you care to become more intimate, and why you should avoid familiarity with shallow people." (Schopenhauer)

"A singular strength of mind is therefore required to enable a man to live among others consistently with his own ideas and convictions, to be master of himself, and not fall into the habits or exhibit the same passions as those with whom he associates." (Spinoza)

A disciple confessed his bad habit of repeating gossip. Said the Master, "Repeating it wouldn't be so bad if you did not improve on it." (Anthony de Mello)

"It was once the authority of the priest that held us, and now it is the authority of the expert, the specialist. Have you not noticed how you treat a man with a title, a man of position, the powerful executive?" (J. Krishnamurti)

A Man interrupted one of the Buddha's lectures with a flood of abuse. Buddha waited until he had finished and then asked him, "If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?"
"To the one who offered it," said the man. "Then," said the Buddha, "I decline to accept your abuse and request you to keep it for yourself." (Buddhism)

"Everything great and intelligent is in the minority." (Johann von Goethe)

"If everyone were nice and pleasant, I would have no opportunity for practical training; so I should be glad to have people to practice on." (G.I. Gurdjieff)

"As you acquire more and more spiritual light, a wonderful thing will happen by a definite spiritual law. What happens is people in love with darkness will move away from you. They want absolutely nothing to do with you. The torment of being unable to pull you back into the mud is too great for them." (Vernon Howard)

"So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's." (Friedrich Nietzsche)

"Take another example - a roomful of guests in full dress, being received with great ceremony. You could almost believe that this is a noble and distinguished company; but, as a matter of fact, it is compulsion, pain and boredom who are the real guests. For where many are invited, it is a rabble - even if they all wear stars. Really good society is everywhere of necessity very small. In brilliant festivals and noisy entertainments, there is always, at bottom a sense of emptiness prevalent. A false tone is there." (Schopenhauer)

"If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm." (Marcus Aurelius)

"Spirituality is awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness. When your mother got angry with you, she didn't say there was something wrong with her, she said there was something wrong with you; otherwise she wouldn't have been angry. Well, I made the great discovery that if you are angry, Mother, there's something wrong with you. So you'd better cope with your anger. Stay with it and cope with it. It's not mine. Whether there's something wrong with me or not, I'll examine that independently of your anger. I'm not going to be influenced by your anger. "
"Only a very aware person can refuse to pick up the guilt and anger, can say, 'You're having a tantrum. Too bad. I don't feel the slightest desire to rescue you anymore, and I refuse to feel guilty.'" (Anthony de Mello)

"Make not a close friend of a melancholy, sad person. He will be sure to increase your adversity and decrease your good fortune. He goes always heavily loaded, and you must bear half." (Francoise Fenelon)

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured and far away." (Henry David Thoreau)

"Condemning others makes a man oblivious to his own faults, which therefore flourish unrebuked. Many individuals hide their own serious flaws behind a critical spirit. . . They cannot stand the painful operation of being themselves corrected. Such persons expend their energy and intelligence on superficial activities and so have neither time nor vitality left to concentrate on essentials." (Paramahansa Yogananda)

"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive." (Robert Louis Stevenson)

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." (Buddha)

Requiem

My mind
splits open,
into the chasm
that opens,
I plunge
headlong
in free fall
into darkness,
total.
Groping,
clutching
at a hand-hold.
In the silence,
absolute,
thoughts depart,
feelings fall away,
but my soul -
it finds itself.

Dusk Chorus

Singing,
scolding,
twittering,
clucking,
screeching,
fluttering
birds,
producing
a bouquet of sounds.
I, on the park bench,
drinking it all in.
Soul,
dancing
to the medley.
Rising,
to be one with them.

Let's play the drum for Lord Shiva

I had the occasion to watch a solo Bharat Natyam recital recently in which in one of the pieces the dancer plays tribute to Lord Shiva. Before the actual dance, he explains to us what the piece is about. Among other things he tells us that Nandi, Lord Shiva's vahana loved to play the mridangam for the Lord. He played the rhythm for Shiva's Tandav with absolute joy and devotion.

Then when the dancer starts dancing he depicts Nandi playing with such passion and joy and ecstasy that I was totally floored. I couldn't help thinking "Wow! Look at Nandi play for Lord Shiva, if only we could play like that". If only we could go about our daily life and act and talk and think like Nandi played the drum for Shiva, wouldn't that be awesome. If underlying each of our actions there was love, just like Nandi had, wouldn't our drumbeat be just as ecstatic. Wouldn't our actions then be free of any expectation of acknowledgement or recognition, after all we are playing for Lord Shiva, right? Applying the laws of karma, if our actions are performed with love, wouldn't love then return to us. Isn't that a super deal?

So, just like Nandi did, let's play our drum for Shiva. With love and passion. After all, this life too is a Tandav. This life too is a celebration and a creation.

random snapshots - 2

the wind in the trees,
song birds and wind-chimes
playing ‘antakshari’
cat nestled in my lap
loving strokes on velvet fur
or is she stroking me?

moonlight on the carpet
in lacy filigreed patterns
God’s little love message
your scent on my breath
long after you have gone
souls refusing to part

a voice on the telephone
tender, motherly love
a child I will always be
ashes of my dreams
poured into my pen
how the poems bloom!
~~~

Spring blossoms and godly contests

Ah! Spring is here! There are flowers everywhere and red, tender leaves at the tips of branches. Our plum tree is aglow with buds turning into blossoms on all the lichen-covered branches with not a single leaf in sight. The daffodils are out in full bloom, whole beds given over to these smiling, yellow-headed bell-shaped beauties. It lifts my heart and brings on a smile whenever I see daffodils nodding gently in the breeze.

The variety of flowers is amazing, from tiny star-shaped white flowers cascading over fences to large magnolia and rhododendron clusters. When I go on my walks I pass a tree bare except for pink flowers. I stand under the tree looking up at the blue sky visible through the lattice of delicate pink. And I feel like a queen.

Once I saw a tui bird, a distinguished gentlemanly fellow with a dark green body and a small white pompom at its throat looking like a bowtie, having his meal. It had a long tapering beak which it tucked into yellow bell-shaped flowers and drank deep of the nectar. then it skipped on to another branch and did the same. I stood watching it in fascination until it few away.

At the crack of dawn, the ‘Dawn Chorus’ starts its combined singing, sweet, dulcet tones combine with chirrupy warbling to create unusual melodies. And just as quickly they fade away as the birds take off for the day in search of food and other pursuits. The same is repeated in the evening as the birds come home to roost. Occasionally a lone owl calls in the dead of the night.

There is an ongoing contest between the rain god and the sun god. For the past few days the rain god has been winning, so the rain has been steadily falling even at night when I wake up to the steady beat of the rain on the roof. My office window looks out to a verdant view. The mist sits on the hilltops and the folds between the hills and it looks like the hills are in dreamland with their heads in the clouds. The trees and the grass are a fresh shade of green which only rain can conjure up. And the red-tiled roofs contrasted against the green looks striking. The windows are sprinkled with tiny streams of rain water which look more beautiful than any decoration.

But the sun god watches from behind the clouds, smiling. He knows his day will come, when the clouds will disappear and people will look up smiling at the blue sky and bask in the sunshine, and his light will wink off faraway windows, and dance on the surfaces of leaves rustling in the wind, and shimmer on the tops of rippling waves.

The rain and clouds are only temporary while the sun is always there even if you don’t see it sometimes. Just like God.

random snapshots

clothes drying on the line
fluttering madly in the wind
longing to be free.

sunbeams on the water
peering into the depths
greeting sunbathing fish.

cars lined up on the highway
gleaming metal on black ribbon
playing ‘catch-me-if-you-can’.

a voice on the telephone
energy impulses / sound waves
makes or breaks a life.
long, intimate silences
on lazy languorous afternoons
when only the Soul speaks.

insect-buzz and birdsong
in the silence of a forest
God listening to Himself.

~~~

The bridal night

The night is cloudy and still. A lone owl hoots in the distance. A sad melancholy sound. The trees are unstirring, the birds asleep. But in the sky a spectacle unfolds. The clouds move across the sky in a slow, dreamy motion. Soft, pale and wispy, they are lit up with a gentle glow. Suddenly, the clouds part and the deep black sky appears. Stars twinkle one by one. And then she emerges, the ethereal bride, half her face in shadows, the other half blushing a soft shade of red. And just as quickly the clouds hasten to cover her face, as if afraid of the evil eye.

But I am patient, I stand in the cold night air, wrapped in a blanket, looking up at the sky. The clouds have taken on a pink glow and glide across the sky like a bridal procession. Then they grant me one more glimpse. The dark sky reappears, more stars twinkle and the bride reveals her face again. The shadows are deeper and the blush has brightened. She laughs at me and I laugh back at her. The blushing bride in a dreamy sky. On the night of the total lunar eclipse. A celestial hide-n-seek. A surreal, moving, memorable experience.

I dwell in Possibility

I dwell in Possibility
A fairer House than Prose.
More numerous of Windows
Superior--for Doors.

Of Chambers as the Cedars
Impregnable of Eye.
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky.

Of Visitors--the fairest,
For Occupation--This,
The spreading wide my narrow
Hands To gather Paradise.
- Emily Dickinson

If only I could

If I could have your shoulder again,
I would soak it with my tears.
If I could have your lap again,
There I would lay my fears.

If I could hear your voice again,
I would stop still and listen.
If I could see your smile again,
With joy my world would glisten.

My love of music I got from you,
My passion for books was yours too.
Your gentleness lives on in my heart,
Nature and beauty a lovely part.

The trees you planted grow tall and strong,
The house you built weathers on and on.
Your presence I sense in the fragrant scene,
When you left, you became one with me.

Eulogy

Your hand on my head is gentle still,
Your kiss on my forehead tender,
Heartfelt are your blessings still,
Your love as always overfull.

Why would I weep and moan and groan,
And rend my clothes asunder?
From this useless shell, empty and worn,
Oh gentle spirit, long have you flown.

Death may have pulled a trick on us.
And torn this bond asunder,
But how can there be a goodbye
When I hold you deep inside?

My place of worship

I have a litle forest in my backyard, tall trees grow close together along with ferns and bamboo and flowering bushes and the ground is carpeted with brown, rotting leaves. On sunny days, sunlight slants in and lights up the spaces in between. Leaves rustle in the still air and sometimes birds call in lilting cadences. This is my place of worship. The trees standing tall are the columns of the temple and the bushes are the altars. The birds are the unrehearsed choir and the camelias are the offerings. Here my soul bows to a gentle presence, here my soul sings His rhapsody, here I touch His soft-footed feet, here I find my God.

Twenty Special Secrets

1. When two people meet, the prize always goes to the one with the most self-insight. He will be calmer, more confident, more at ease with the other.

2. Never permit the behavior of other people to tell you how to feel.

3. Pay little attention to what people say or do. Instead, try to see their innermost motive for speaking and acting. (Now, apply this very same rule to yourself and you become an enlightened person!)

4. Any friendship requiring the submission of your original nature and dignity to another person is all wrong.

5. Mystically speaking, there is no difference between you and another person. This is why we cannot hurt another without hurting ourselves, nor help another without helping ourselves.

6. When we are free of all unnecessary desires toward other people, we can never be deceived or hurt.

7. You take a giant step toward psychological maturity when you refuse to angrily defend yourself against unjust slander. For one thing, resistance disturbs your own peace of mind.

8. You understand others to the exact degree that you really understand yourself. Work for more self-knowledge.

9. Do not be afraid to fully experience everything that happens to you in your human relations, especially the pains and disappointments. Do this and everything becomes clear at last.

10. The individual who really knows what it means to love has no anxiety when his love is unseen or rejected.

11. If you painfully lose a valuable friend, do not rush out for a replacement. Such action prevents you from examining your heartache and breaking free of it.

12. Do not be afraid to be a nobody in the social world. This is a deeper and richer truth than appears on the surface.

13. Every unpleasant experience with another person is an opportunity to see people as they are, not as we mistakenly idealize them. The more unpleasant the other person is, the more he can teach you.

14. You can be so wonderfully free from a sense of injury and injustice that you are surprised when you hear others complain of them.

15. We cannot recognize a virtue in another person that we do not possess in ourselves. It takes a truly loving and patient person to recognize those virtues in another.

16. Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself.

17. There are parts of you that want the loving life and parts that do not. Place yourself on the side of your positive forces; do all you can to aid and encourage them.

18. You must stop living so timidly, from fixed fears of what others will think of you and of what you will think of them.

19. Do not contrive to be a loving person; work to be a real person. Being real is being loving.

20. The greatest love you could ever offer to another is to so transform your inner life that others are attracted to your genuine example of goodness.

- Vernon Howard

Father

One night a father overheard his son pray:
"Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is."
Later that night, the Father prayed,
"Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be."

-- Unknown

The Imposter

Laugh not your lifeless laugh,
Shake not your fleshless bones.
You have stalked us through life,
Through every living moment.
Relentless, you have followed us
Through our nights and our days.
You have cast your shadow on our sleep,
And eaten with us at our table.

But now your stealthy steps bring no dread,
Your deathly pallor frightens me no more.
For I have pulled aside your dark mask,
Unafraid, I have looked you in your face,
I have parted the veil and exposed your lie.
For all I can see is life everlasting,
A journey endless, a peace eternal.
Proud death, you are but an imposter.
---------------------------------------------

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. - Wordsworth

--------------------------------------------------------

Writing

Writing is essentially a solitary activity. When a writer writes he enters the dark cave of his mind, where no one else can enter, sets fire to his soul, fuels it with his joy and his pain and everything else in between and hopes that the ensuing light will pour into his pen and transform itself into words. After he has done with putting it down, he has finished his work, he has answered his calling. A writer who seeks fame and recognition is a peddlar of his soul.

Haiku

The ashes of my dreams
I have poured into my pen,
Look, how the poems blossom !

A place called home

There is a place called home
Where my spirit moves among the trees
And rises as sap into the leaves
And rustles as the wind beneath birds’ wings.


There is a place called home
Where yellow wildflowers sprinkle the grass
And always amaze me with their love for life
And fairies dance beneath the toadstools.

There is a place called home
Where my spirit sings to the drumbeat of rain
On the roof, and stands in awe to the moan
Of the wind wailing against the walls.

There is a place called home
Where my spirit soars to the twinkling stars
In a cloudless sky and trips across the Milky Way
And the moon rises laughing behind the hills.

There is a place called home
Where my spirit rests in the hollow of the valley
Nestling among verdant hills lit up with the laughter
Of a hundred, babbling, sparkling brooks.

The crumbling conversation

I stand before your door, dear friend,
Desolate, begging, bowl in hand,
Asking a crumb, a stitch, a caring hand,
This broken heart with which to mend.

But talk you would of the weather vane,
The howling wind, the thundering rain,
While my heart lashed with stormy pain,
Seeks a solitary, soothing word in vain.

Of war and peace you talk of next,
Of orphans, widows, of seething unrest,
While peace has fled my ravaged heart,
And sleep is but a fleeting guest.

Surely India cannot be left behind,
The wealth, the growth, the prospering land,
My hunger meanwhile gnaws and growls, and
The bowl grows heavy in my hand.

Where are those radiant, open lines of trust?
Those shining pathways to your heart,
How well you play a stranger’s part,
While the bowl sadly crumbles into dust.

The serene air

The day dawns misty and rainy, the hills outside our window fade in and out of the mist like specters. The rain is a fine spray on the windshield. As the train runs past the sea the hills in the distance are completely obscured by the mist and the bay looks like an open sea, vast and endless. There is no colour visible except varying shades of grey from white to a shiny, steely blue, and Mt.Victoria rises in the distance like a ghost hill, mysteriously stripped of the dwellings clinging to its sides. In spite of the dark, brooding sky and the colourless landscape, I feel a serenity matched by the floating mist, the still air and the gentle presence of God in the wind gently caressing the steel sea.

Love or Sacrifice?

Being an Indian woman, years of conditioning have taught me to sacrifice. Sacrifice my needs, my wants, my desires, my dreams for the needs of others. But in my book sacrifice is a bad word. If you are giving up something for someone else it should be out of love, willingly, it should be an act of love, a giving, then it blesses you and the receiver too. But sacrifice implies that you are doing it out of obligation, it is forced out of you by conditioning, by a sense of duty, there is an element of force to it, albeit hidden. Or it is done out a hidden fear, as if you might lose something if you didn’t sacrifice..

So we have been taught to sacrifice, we are told the rewards are many, all to be reaped in the afterlife. And maybe there are rewards in this life too. For sacrificing allows a person to feel morally superior, self-righteous even, all the brownie points that you collect to be redeemed according to the Law of Karma. And often it is used as emotional blackmail, as in “I sacrificed my life for you and you can’t even do this little thing for me….”. It gives you leverage over others. But in the final analysis, in total honesty, if can you look deep into your heart, it is quite possible that you mind find anger and resentment, a touch of bitterness even, over all the things that you sacrificed, because you did it not out of love.

Therefore, above all, love yourself. Like Buddha said “You can look the whole world over and never find anyone more deserving of love than yourself”. Then you are brimming with love and it flows in all directions towards all things. Then there will be no need to sacrifice, because all your acts will be acts of love.

All things are possible

Today evening as the train goes by the sea, I can see the clouds sitting atop the hills, grey clouds with rosy plumes like exotic birds, and the water rippling silver with the faintest touch of pink. And the folds in the hills lit up by the reflected rays of the setting sun. And I ask God how he paints a masterpiece on the sky every evening. He says, "All things are possible with me, all things are possible with you too". Somehow it is very comforting to know that my life is in the hands of someone so loving, so creative and so encompassing.

You come to me, always

On gloriously alive mornings,
The golden light slanting.
You come to me, laughing
As playful sunbeams, tripping,
Dancing, kissing my face.

On bright, sunlit afternoons,
Walking towards the hills,
You come to me, smiling
A beauteous vision of wildflowers
Around a sudden bend.

In the hush of twilight,
As the night falls gently.
You come to me, joyous
On the velvet wings of birds
Coming home to roost.

In the still of the night
Shadows asleep ‘neath the trees.
You come to me, soft-footed
As silvery moonbeams, treading
Tiptoe across the grass.

In the warm embrace of sleep,
Mind still, heart at peace.
You come to me, singing
Sweet melodies of spirits
Mingling, merging, becoming one.

Like a dream come true……

A Return to Love

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous -
Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people
Won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone,
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
Give other people permission to do the same.

- Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

Trees

I think I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast.

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray.

A tree that may in summer wear,
A nest of robins in her hair.

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

- Joyce Kilmer

Flower musings, pumpkin and lemon

It is Sunday morning and I am in the backyard. This part of our yard is secluded; it is cut off from neighbours’ eyes by fencing and from our house by thick clumps of trees, like my own piece of paradise. The cranberry bush is laden with fruit and I pluck them off and eat the sweet, juicy berries as a prequel to breakfast. The pumpkin vine in the vegetable patch gleams a tender green, the leaves with tiny translucent spikes, and a pumpkin in the early stages of infancy. There is also a single bloom, yellow and radiant, with a bell like base flaring into the delicate petal. I peep inside and to my wonder and surprise there is a bee inside, doing a kind of dance which I’m sure only the bees know the steps of. It is such a wondrous sight, nature in the process of symbiosis, giving and taking, wordlessly.


I walk past the clumps of trees, giving off a woody fragrance, exclusive to trees on early mornings or under damp, moist conditions and my heart rises in joy and gratitude like as if the trees had just sung a ghazal. Past the bird bath, the water turned rancid and brown, and the elegant ferns with fronds rising like fans fit for queens, till I reach the lemon tree. There are a few flowers and fewer fruit, nature is winding down for winter. Lemon flowers have this most delicately exquisite fragrance and when the tree is in full bloom, I just stand next to it and drink of the smell or when I am passing by, a whiff hits me and makes me pause and remember that the beauty in life lies in the tiny, imperceptible things that we so often unknowingly pass by.

Weekends, among other things …………

There is a practice here in the workplace that I found a bit odd in the beginning – asking about your weekend. I used to find it difficult to answer at first, but then I realized that it was just a means of starting a conversation. You are free to say anything you want, even invent something and often it leads to other discussions that can get quite interesting.

Then one day I said to a friend “why do you ask me what I did on the weekend, I might tell you all that I did but not what I experienced. I might not tell you that I stood on the balcony at night and watched the full moon rise over the trees and even the clouds that hung over the moon couldn’t dilute the magical quality of the light that filled the sky and lit up the hills, the trees, the grass, the house with a gentle, dreamy light. And in spite of the moonlight, the stars twinkled and the universe that stretched out into eternity, God’s benediction everywhere, His lovely smile everywhere.

Or that the petals of the rose that felt velvety to the touch, God’s love and his joy of creation in every fragrant whorl, as if God’s saying to me, ‘Let you every act be an act of love, my child. Let your every thought, every word create beauty, bring harmony, introduce joy’.”

Daybreak

Today morning I am catching the early morning train which is rather unusual but such a treat. The day is just breaking and patches of silvery sky are visible behind the clouds. The river gleams silver into the distance where it meets with the sea. The is a lone paddle boat in it, the rider gently paddling away like a ghost oarsman. As we come to the sea the scene is eerie, the hills are in shadows and water is a rippling sheet of silver, the light cast by the sunlight escaping from behind soft, cottony clouds has a mystical quality to it. There are a group of oarsmen rowing a canoe in perfect unison. Wellington gleams dully in the distance caught by stray patches of light, willing it to wake up.

Daybreak is a herald of new beginnings, like God has kept his promise and it is up to us to seize the opportunity. It brings hope and light into the darkness that has gone before and the light breaking out through the gaps in the clouds fills my heart with gladness and joy.

Surprising enough the train is full, Wellingtonians like to start early. But the sleep tugging at my eyelids reminds me that I am a nightbird still.

The Deep

I want to go,
to the middle of the sea,
and lie face down,
with my back to the sun,
looking into the depths.

At some point I will succumb
to those watery arms.
Body racked, with want of air,
until I start to inhale,
water filling up the lungs,
also the stomach,
bloating, exploding.

I don’t know when
my soul will leave the body.
Will it be sad?
Disappointed ? Glad ?
Will some animal dine on the shell?
Or will it be washed up
on some forgotten shore?

A thin line of reason
holds on to this life,
but the desire is long gone.

One heck of a lady

There are lots of things about Kiwis that are commendable but their die-hard spirit and independence often stand out.

My friend's 80 year old mother suffers from Leukemia (incurable) and her Dad (also 80) from Alzheimers, who sometimes has difficulty remembering who he is and who his wife is (who is the old lady with grey hair in the other room?). Both of them live by themselves and refuse to move into the children's homes. Her Mum drives herself and her husband around, does the shopping, housework, pays the bills etc. When her blood count drops, she requires transfusions and last month she had to be rushed to hospital with a clot in the leg.

So yesterday when my friend said to me that her Mum's going to Australia alone for two weeks, I was surprised. I asked "Why?"

"Oh ! She's got cousins. She has put Dad in a respite home so he'll be okay. She said she needed a break and wanted some time to herself".

All I could say was 'WOW !"

I know that different people will call it different things, but I call it 'nurturing yourself'.

Greed / Beyond Greed

-------- Excerpt from the book 'Osho Transformation' -------

GREED

Whenever people become very greedy, they become very hurried, and go on finding more ways to gain more speed. They are continuously on the run because they think that life is running out. These are people who say, “Time is money.” Time is money? Money is very limited, time is unlimited. Time is not money, time is eternity – it has always been there and will always be there. And you have always been here and you will always be here.

So drop greed, and don’t be bothered about the result. Sometimes it happens that because of your impatience, you miss many things.

BEYOND GREED

Man is full if he in tune with the universe. If he is not in tune with the universe then he is empty, utterly empty. And out of that emptiness comes greed. Greed is to fill it – with money, with furniture, with friends, with lovers, with anything – because one cannot live in emptiness. It is horrifying, it is a ghost life. If you are empty and there is nothing inside you, it is impossible to live.

To have this feeling that you have much inside you, there are only two ways: either you get in tune with the universe…… Then you are filled with the whole, with all the flowers and with all the stars. They are within you just as they are without you. That is real fulfillment. But if you don’t do that – and millions of people are not doing that – then the easier way is to fill it with any junk.

Greed simply means you are feeling a deep emptiness and you want to fill it with anything possible, it doesn’t matter what it is. And once you understand it, then you have nothing to do with greed. You have something to do with coming into communion with the whole, so the inner emptiness disappears. And with it, all greed disappears.

But there are mad people all over the world, and they are collecting things to fill their emptiness. Somebody is collecting money although he never uses it. People are eating; they are not feeling hungry and still they go on swallowing. They know that this is going to create suffering, they will be sick, but they cannot prevent themselves. This eating is also a filling-up process. So there can be many ways to fill emptiness, although it is never full - it remains empty, and you remain miserable because it is never enough. More is needed, and the more and the demand for more is unending.

You have to understand the emptiness that you are trying to fill, and ask the question, “Why am I empty? The whole existence is so full, why am I empty? Perhaps I have lost track – I am no longer moving in the same direction, I am no longer existential. That is the cause of my emptiness.”

So be existential.

Let go, and move closer to existence in silence and peace, in meditation.

And one day you will see you are so full – overfull, overflowing – of joy, of blissfulness, of benediction. You have so much of it that you can give it to the whole world and yet it will not be exhausted.

That day, for the first time you will not feel any greed – for money, for food, for things, for anything. You will live naturally, and whatever is needed you will find it.

Dilemma

The decision hovers over us like a knife,
waiting for a move, waiting to strike,
while I search the empty silence for clues.

A sign, a call, a whisper in the night,
a stray, murmuring beam of moonlight,
to show the way, to shed some light.

The heart trembling, hides its face,
the mind deadlocked, lost, confused,
the spirit sublime, looks on amused.

"Tarry", tinkles the wind-chime in the breeze,
"Don't go", say the wildly nodding trees,
"Stay awhile, stay awhile", the owl calls.

Riverside retreat

It is Sunday and Mathew is still in Auckland, but the day is warm and bright and tempts me to bask in the sunshine. So I get into the car and take off in the general direction of Kaitoke which I have seen on the map but never visited. On the way, the river gleams in the sunshine and picnikers are splashing about in the knee-deep water or simply lolling about on the grass by the river. I reach Kaitoke in about half an hour and look for a secluded spot not frequented by the river-splashers. There is a little gap in the trees by the river and I get the plastic sheet out of the car together with my lunch and books and settle down under the trees. There are clumps of yellow-orange flowers everywhere as if the sunlight fell on the grass and deciding to stay transformed itself into flowers. It is moist and cool in the shade and the river bounding over rocks and pebbles is beautifully melodious. Slowly the cares of everyday life fall away and reading Osho’s Transformation book transports me into the world of the spirit, where all is peaceful and tranquil. And I come away feeling rejuvenated and refreshed having spent the day in the company of nature whose pace is unhurried and whose source is the Spirit.

Unburdening on the beach

It is Saturday and Mathew is in Auckland so I decide to gift myself the day. I take off for Raumati to meet Joan. Raumati is around 60K from Wellington up the Kapiti coast and there is some breathtaking scenery along the way. As I round the corner of the hill, the sea stretches out before me, languid, in deep shades of aquamarine, the morning sun glinting off the breakers as they curl around the rocks. The traffic is sparse for a Saturday and I reach Joan's at around midday. Joan's standing at the end of her driveway with open arms and a million watt smile. Just seeing her happy to see me is treat by itself. What follows thereafter is a day spent in the company of the sea, wind and sunshine and a special person sharing heartaches and insights and wisdom and understanding. We drive up to Paraparaumu which is a further 10K up the coast and settle down to a long, leisurely lunch sitting outside a café, soaking in the sun, and unburdening ourselves. Life, memories, lessons, challenges, guidance, awakening, the road taken and the road-yet-to-be-taken, all feature in our conversation and sometimes tears threaten to break out from behind the sunglasses.

After lunch we stroll along the beach made more beautiful with driftwood. Then we head back to Joan's place again and after a cup of tea, change into our swimsuits and head for the beach. As I step into the water it feels chilly but as I walk further and further into the waves, the water gets warmer and warmer as my body gets accustomed to the water. The sun shining directly overhead scatters a swathe of dancing, twinkling diamonds on the water and it feels as if the sun is saying to me 'Take all that life has to offer, be alive, be free". And so I get into the flow of the waves. It is a bit windy so the sea is a bit rough, and wave after wave comes crashing over me. And as I lie there I feel the ebb and flow of the tide and the pull of the moon and the expanse of the universe above me and feel so connected with everything. There are only 6 people on the beach and three of us are in the water. Joan's sitting and chatting on the shore with a couple of guys with paddle boats.

Swim over, we go back to Joan's house and I take a shower. By the time I come out some of Joan's friends have arrived with their children and we just sit out on the deck and chill out. It is so good to be in the sun and warmth with the wind tossing the manes of the trees and causing the wind-chimes to tinkle pleasantly. Around six I head back home, my heart glowing with memories of fun and warmth and friendship, of feeling one with the ocean, of browsing through a crystal shop buying crystals, a wind-chime and a Osho Tranformation book.

Thank you God ,for Raumati and its beach, for a laid-back day in the sun and for beautiful friends like Joan.

Trust

I did not die

Do not stand

at my grave and weep.

I am not there.

I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints of snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken

in the morning hush.

I am the swift uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars

that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry

I am not there;

I did not die.

-Anonymous

I believe

I believe that the realm of possibility is infinite and boundless,
therefore I dream……

I believe that faith has infinite organising power,
therefore I trust that my dreams will come true………

I believe that the Universe provides with whatever you ask
if the motivation behind the asking is Love,
therefore my dreams become manifest.

God speaking

Just had a flash of insight which I thought I must share............

All minds are great. God speaks through all of us, it's just that he is trying to say different things. So the next time you are tempted to label something as stupid, inane, outrageous or even evil, just tell yourself that it is God speaking.

This wisdom was brought home to me one weekend when I was watching a late-night movie, a horror movie, a genre I have never enjoyed. . I don’t know what force pinned me to the sofa through all those senseless murders. But after all the killing and blood and gore, the movie spoke to me. I found a message that was somehow very pertinent to me at that stage of my life.

So now I pay special attention to what people say even though sometimes it sounds flippant or prejudiced. And I watch all kinds of movies, even though I still haven't managed to muster the courage to watch a Govinda movie. Must go and find out what God's saying to me through Govinda.

Desolation

A scream raged within me,
but couldn’t find a voice,
it stormed through my heart,
and held it in a gripping vice.

My heart now is a wasteland city,
a shrine devoid of its deity,
a song shorn of melody,
a festival of all its gaiety.

Among the shambles, the shattered ruins,
I search for a foothold, a light,
this spirit with which to spark,
before the scream brings in the night.

Soul song

Silence,
soft and blessed,
plucks at my heart-strings
with love-tipped fingers,
a rain-scented song arises
like a koel’s call
in the deep silence of the forest.

In this blessed silence,
I hear your footfalls
on the dew-strewn pathways of my heart,
longing gives way to love,
joy breaks free
in the gentle rain of tears.

In this blessed silence
we meet and become one,
there is no You nor I
nor the universe,
just the lightness of nothingness.

The Lord's call

I

Cast aside the dark cloak of the night,
and open your eyes to the blinding light.
Wake up, my child, to the luminous dawn,
come, together let's straddle the sun.
Through the laughing, singing skies let's sail,
infinite, limitless, with glorious trail.

II

Know that you are in Me, and I in you,
in every pain that wounds your heart,
and makes you bleed into the long, dark night.
Tender-hearted, may that pain make you.

In your friend's betrayal, your child's sparkling laughter,
in every joy that makes your spirit sing,
like lark ascending on light-tipped wing.
May gratefulness fill your heart, thereafter.