Poetry / Ultimate freedom; 'Tell me if it isn't true for you?' [6]

Tell me if it isn't true for you?
That when you're not caught up in 'things to do',
your mind is not submersed, as if,
in some deep and bottomless ocean of feelings .. painful and pleasant, and all shades in between.
Each feeling an association with the happenings in your life,
and you with no choice, except to feel them all, in quiet acceptance.

In that space within,
there is yet some room to breathe,
created as though by another feeling,
which has not come in response,
directly, of these things happening with you.
It is almost of another nature, but not quite.
And you, you most want to believe in this.

So cold and refreshing is the wash of this feeling.
You believe you even have some hold on it,
to make it live on.
A feeling of joy bathing the dried up limbs of your soul, the person within.
You feel it in the region of your heart, a sweet pain,
like a person estranged, an outcast, who doesn't care.

Imagine a darkness, infinite;
against it, a dried tree its branches like claws in the sky;
and trapped within, a cold blue lightning, crackling from limb to limb;
no other place to go but this entity, until finally, it bursts into a flame.
The cracking sound giving way to a soothing murmur;
a diffusing warmth spreading through the coldness of the night.

You regard the scene. Your life, the tree
.. its gray and dried branches, ready to fall.
This incessant lightning, biting your ears;
till finally it finds enough of your substance and bursts into flame;
devouring, devouring sweetly; your limbs,
as they turn to ashes, pieces falling into a nothingness below.

You come from somewhere, see the scarring on the ground,
your cremated remains; and wonder, who was there ?

Thanks.

Poetry / Another Sunday morning [5]

Do you too feel the special stillness of a Sunday morning ?
Have you wondered too why each day was not like this ?
I don't grudge people their need for action and working ..
I find myself thinking though, what's the point of it all !

And as they lie in bed, slumbering, a pity comes over me;
as though they're like so many sheep.

What is it they hope to find by their strenuous endeavors ?
When they themselves will not be there,
whose comfort, for whose short-lived enjoyment do they work so hard ?

I would turn instead to beauty. To art and artistic things.
To feelings and expressing. But I confess,
that joy too is a momentary thing.
Yet it makes more sense to me than the other.

For these kind too came into my life,
driven by greed and insecurity.
Asked me if I could do for them
what they could not themselves do,
and then they had no more need for me.

But this is not about me.
Perhaps you wonder, is beauty a thing from your past and childhood?
Something you can scant feel now, and even less express.
I would not know what to answer if you asked;
but here is what I would try:

An objective thing it is, beauty, as something really there.
If you have the eyes to see it;
and a tranquility in your mind,
then it would come to you.

You see it in the morning light,
in the early sun of february.
You see it in the hanging mist,
a white-ish blueness floating in the air.
You hear it in the sounds of birds,
and in chimes from far off temple bells.

You'll see it in a sculpture,
if there's one near where you live.
In the design of tables and chairs,
in the coffee place near you.
You'll see it in the faces of smiling girls who there greet you.

But enough ! Have you wondered about life today ?
Have you asked yourself, am I for beauty, or this meaningless-ness.

Thank you.

Writing Feedback / Center Stage; The music has begun [6]

MUSIC STAGE

Imagine a stage --- a really big one, like the kind which have professional performances. Imagine you're standing there, behind the curtains on the side. The music has begun -- Nutcracker Suite -- and the rising strains fill the hall. Perspiration beads your face, the overhead lights are shining; brightly illuminating a spot in the center of the stage. A expectant hush fills the hall and you close your eyes to focus on the music and lose yourself in it. Other stage hands are looking at you but their faces register as blank of expression. That isn't where you will find the assurance, as you poise yourself, ready to launch from the sidelines on cue..

Your first movement is a rush to the center as the spotlight catches you. The music rises in a crescendo and you slowly twirl, countless eyes fixing you in their gaze; and you feel the audience lean back in their seats; they expect a high performance tonight, and you will not disappoint them. Suddenly your partner is fluttering on to the scene, dressed in pink, her ballerina shoes barely touching the ground. A smile fixed on her face, the one for the stage, and you try to meet her eyes; for only then will the magic begin. Each performance is as individual as a painting created afresh, or a poem written for the first time. Only those who have been there on stage know how true this is. Specially so when you want to deliver a virtuoso performance; you, your partner and the music become one. The audience, is almost incidental.

The music tempo picks up and you both go through the early steps, gracefully, almost mechanically. Her's is the more difficult part, you provide the support for her many pirouettes and twirls and swings. You feel her tension as the most intricate motions come on. But you've done it so many times you're confident and try to pass that to her. Then, smoothly, you've both crossed over the difficult passages, and hear a collective sigh from the audience; and then you are rushing into the closing of the piece. She looks at you now, the corners of her mouth twitch in the faintest of smiles. She catches your expression, eyebrows raised - I was never worried - you want to say, and you feel her siding up closer to you, letting you feel her warmth in a small gratitude. The music goes high, then in another crescendo - ends. You both land side to side, immaculately positioned on your feet, and raising your clasped hands together, take your bow; the audience cheers. You've given them the performance they had come for.

Thank you.

Writing Feedback / The unsuspecting wayfarer [5]

It can happen to us, that life might over-burdens us. You side-step, but the problems do not go away. You look at others, but only your own seem to be turning upon you. You might question -- why is this happening with me ? Then like a man caught in a storm on the seas, his ship breaking away like it was made of matchsticks, you confront the elements and your fate. Somewhere within you see yourself, unconcerned, curious even of all this taking place.

The storm comes on, monstrous waves splintering everything, flinging you into the sea. Huge swells pick and toss you as you cling to the floating debris. You go under, many times; swallowing mouthfuls of salt water, crashing repeatedly into the fragmented ship. You hold on still with eyes closed, clinging to a voice within - it will be alright; as everything around is completely destroyed.The storm passes on, leaving a stillness under the night sky. Gentle bobbing sounds, the only witness to your passing fate.

You wait through the night, and the sea greets you without a guile in the morning. As if only a few hours earlier it had not mercilessly ripped into you. You scorn at its pretentious innocence. Sea gulls are diving around you, screeching and swooping into the water. Eventually you are rescued and set upon the shore. Your friends are happy you came through your ordeal, and wondering if it has made you fearful of the seas.

They find you often now standing on the prow of the ship, looking into the horizon as if to spot its monstrous spirit within. Somewhere it lurks there you know, waiting to rob the unsuspecting wayfarer, as it did yours, of your youth.

Thanks.

Writing Feedback / You'd find yourself at this spot each day! ; A Book and Coffee-shop [3]

Which of us has not that special memory, of a place and a time, when we would be sitting totally absorbed, feeling a bliss we were not even aware of, and everything around us seemed right. Was it some Starbucks cafe, outside on a favorite table if the weather was warm, or indoors in some nook and the soft chatter of conversations, amidst aromas of coffee and cake.

You'd have a book in your hand, most likely, something you had searched far and wide, and finally found. It wasn't likely some light reading either, but held, you believed, some knowledge which was vital for you to learn about. Something you had to know, to open a door for yourself, to let yourself into a world you would then see with fresh eyes.

You'd find yourself at this spot each day, or was it in the weekends, if you had a job to go to during the day? Already as you approached the place, your mind would be going over what you had read the day before, and the questions you now had would come tantalizingly up. You knew you held the answer in your hands. You'd take your cup of coffee from the counter person, who smiled in recognition, for you were becoming familiar now. Then you'd walk over to your favorite spot, from where you could see over to some green, some blue as well, of the sky and even of some lake.

The mood would come upon you. As you picked up your coffee cup, no sugar, just black, the bitterness stimulating you, and you'd look at the book that held your answers. A blissful moment, as without opening the pages even, your mind intensified. The chatter in the shop was clearer, but you were not bothered. You wouldn't even have the exact memory, when you picked up the book, when you turned its pages, as snatches of paragraphs, diagrams, formulas wafted past; and you found the exact place where the precious knowledge you wished for, was waiting for you, to be picked up, with the least effort.

When were you reading, and when did your head turn to look into the far distance -- restful to your eyes amongst the green and blue, or just the soothing oldness of ancient grey buildings ? A strange sensation of pleasantness filled you, and you felt yourself transported in the most substantial way. You would not even be the same person you were, before this reading. The words written, spoke gently to you, the words of the author, so knowingly, so firm with a clarity that pierced and shed away the many veils covering it, what he or she was speaking about. You felt then, the power of knowledge. You felt you knew the person talking with you. You felt a desire to linger here as long as you can.

Writing Feedback / As the light begins to dim, Faith. [9]

As we grow older, our thinking begins to fade -- we had never expected it would be so. It seems as if life before us is playing itself out on some 3D screen. It's a movie and we have no part in it.

But there is this person inside, the one watching. What of him? When the only thing you feel are the discomforts arising from little tasks, yet to be done. Proddings, they seem from nature. Somehow it doesn't seem acceptable. You know you can think, not just in the way you used to. These too are your own thoughts, after all, the ones about your isolation.

You've heard, also seen, the elderly when you were yourself growing up, spend their time in some serene way. Not troubled by this emptiness bothering you now. What is it that was on their minds, you find yourself wondering? Why cannot it happen with you as well. Faith. That's what it was mostly about, they said. Why do you not have faith, you wonder ?

Faith seems like some candle-flame. Each person with his own little light. Some burning brighter than others. It's when they come together, and each lets his own light shine, no one can tell how much of their own is causing the brightness, bathing them all. For the time, it is their own light illuminating everything.

I sit now in the dim circle of my flame. Darkness presses around me overpoweringly. I recognize those whose minds too must have lost its vigor like mine. We look wistfully at the younger ones, doing meaningful things, a despair comes upon us. Of a life, we missed out on perhaps ?

Peering into the darkness beyond. Resolutely steeling ourselves, we know that is where the direction lies. It would help so much, if we were to occasionally acknowledge each other.

Writing Feedback / A mystic path [8]

What if there really are some concepts in our world which are hidden from us, as though by a veil. What this veil is may be hard to say, for it may have no purpose other than to keep these concepts hidden. Laws in science, once discovered, become facts that are not lost again. They appear obvious and simple when expressed in the correct language and in a sense are subservient to us.

What if there are laws for which there are no such steps of discovery? And the path is by nature's design, a mystery. Maybe some incantation, or a ritual might unlock them for us. Until actually revealed, the law's very existence is doubtful. As though kept by entities who easily elude our efforts to acquire it in the manner of science. Yet they may hand us the key if they are appeased in their own fashion.. though we may as easily lose the knowledge again.. and perhaps have, repeatedly.

We close our eyes and imagine there, a complete darkness. We feel yet an awareness of the things around, and a capacity to look at our thoughts - a sense of who we know ourself as, but more, just a simple sense of ourself. It is attribute-less and like a recognition. Indian philosophy calls it, Asmita. A nescience, as permanent as matter and intelligence, and the reason for our feeling ourselves as limited. Like an animal covered on birth in the material from the womb, we too struggle to free ourself from this sticky matter clinging to our limbs, covering our eyes, ears and noses.

Asmita is this veil, quite reprehensible .. though our mind did take birth in it. Now it shields us from the limitlessness of time and space, and the reality beyond, which would petrify our mind otherwise. And that alone, may be its purpose.

Thanks.

Writing Feedback / The Reverse Culture essay [5]

Is there any way to judge what life surrounded by squalor is -- except to visit it and see and smell it yourself?

You look at the people sitting there, and they look back, a little suprised, for you're not their usual visitor. Then they go back to doing whatever it is they were doing... and you wrinkle your nose, trying to breathe shallow... as though to keep as much of that air from entering your clean and sacred body, and you too move on. A wry and enigmatic smile on your face that no one can make anything about, and we know, you have no idea what to think. So what really can you even express on your face ?

You see a woman in a tattered sari, no slippers on her feet, carrying some utensil, too over-used. She is waiting her turn by the community tap to fill it with water. You notice her nose-ring, she looks at you, a little defiantly, as if to say I am as much a woman as you are. I do my thing, do you even understand? You with the fancy blue jeans, fancier sandals and rosy toe-nails. Are you here to look at me, are you pitying me?

Ah, then you do move on, a little ashamed and you don't know exactly why. That you are so rich, that you have been to the best places in the world, as a traveller, as a student. Yet you feel that that poor woman has something over you which lets her look upon you in taunting disdain. Funny though, all the time listening to all those old and wise men around in the boardroom, they really seemed to give the impression that you were the great benefactor of these people. That these people would look to you for their succour, and you started believing that yourself and that you would change this landscape. Change the conditions of these weary and dirty people. Not dirty, but covered with dirt. Yes you did think they were so naive, so very ingenous.

But you are a privilged one, of that there isn't a doubt. Not only the enormous wealth you have at your command but also so much power now. That's how you have been groomed. To take the reins of this vast industry, use those canny skills you learned in the hallowed grounds of your Ivy league school. Strange they did not talk of this poverty, the kind you see before you now. The kind you don't know what to make anything of. Somehow that woman you just saw by the community tap, was of your age, looked you straight in the eye, but somehow she did not fit anywhere in the economic pyramid they always talked of in school. Here too in the board room everyone stays away from talking of them, as though they aren't even an entity. As though they will just go away if you ignore them.

Now you may have become a little confused. The business model and all its bells and whistles beckon you with familiarity. These are things you've seen before. You can work the bottom line. You can analyze the balance sheet. You can look over the drawings and choose which way to go. But this picture of reality, this picture of your people that you may have talked wistfully about to your friends, sitting with them in some kerbside cafe, where everything was nice and clean, and smelling nice. Yes this picture you called up then was the country you knew her to be. You wanted to be your own person and to come here and do the right thing by her. But now as she stands before you, wanting to connect with you, you feel your self assailed by doubts in your own capacity to do what you then promised yourself.

Ah well !!! That's life, we must go on !

Writing Feedback / About A New Education Essay [8]

If mathematics is the basis for all concreteness in Western thought, can we ask what is more real and concrete that we may find beyond that? Is it not striking that we are no more able to say why the laws of karma, or reincarnation are true in these times? We do not stop to question the laws which hold for the reality of mathematics. Mathematics itself is a science, not the basis of it. It offers one way of looking at the material world. There can be 'deeper' sciences, or parallel in the power of projecting facts as mathematics does. Why have we discounted the possibility of even the existence of these ?

Mathematics has become the cage of our minds. The enclosure for where we will allow it to wander to. Yet, our real concern is in searching for the causes, of events, of outcomes. Mathematics has been a useful tool for such explorations. Whatever we could line up within its laws, pretty much holds correct. But is that the absolute and last word on looking into, and for laws, that determine how nature will reveal itself? We are limiting ourselves by thinking so.

Our minds become conditioned thinking 'rationally'. Logic and rationality were good, as other things in the course of human evolution have been. We can at least acknowledge that we wear these as fetters now.

We fear that we might only regress by letting go of these structures in our mental lives, and our real ones. That everything other than them is cloud-like, empty beliefs, old wives tales and superstitions. We can acknowledge this fear too!

Were that it was in our own hands to determine where we will be next! And if only, could we have looked into, and explained, how our life has moved on its path in the past.

We have memories of places we were in, as we grew, and what took us there we have vague recollections of. Things that we heard of from our brethren and closer kin. The actual cause lies in the minds of those who cared for us that time and what they could do with the resources they had. But more than anything else, it is their deepest wishes for themselves and their children. This was the greater force for our lives turning out as they did and where we found ourselves, and also what we took up in our minds to accomplish.

Do you not acknowledge this as the greater and determining force in your life? Not the distance to the nearest city. Not the climate in your town. Not its population, its dirtiness. Not the many other things which define the social conditions of the town or village, or the country you come from.

But there it is ..in the faces of those who cared for you. Can you measure that with science at this time? No. But you can speak long and eloquently of your feelings of gratitude for their sufferings and sacrifice only by looking upon their faces. Is that from memory that these words come forward? They would be a little empty then. No, you read them; like an infant who gazes into the eyes of his mother. These are more than just emotions, and as concrete as causes that determine events.

How much more meaningful to know what these really are, or where are they formed. They are not clearly visible or understood, is certain. Determination, shrewdness, intensity, perseverance - how much more significant the science which looks beyond these basics to say accurately where one is heading !

Education has relegated these matters to our psychological make up. As if these are some blunt forces, only vaguely determining the future for us. But look to your past, these same made your parent go through all kinds of weather to drop you off to your class. Your mother to hold all her other expenses at bay and direct them to your needs. And as a child, you perhaps communicated silently with them, when the lights went out in your small house and you saw your father push out the water pouring in from the cracks. And when he saw you looking at him, too young to help, he may have smiled at you. What did you read in his eyes and actions, but your future? What did he communicate but something more real than hours and hours of college work will do in determining the future for you?