Monica Dayakar - A Candle In The Wind...

 

There are a lot of weird ideas about this...

Awakening... enlightenment... the shift in perception...

A natural fall out... thinking that everything will change after the shift...

That enlightenment means that they will no longer be human...

Even sages are sublimely human...

I heard someone say...

" We do not become selfless doormats..." !!

And yet... yet...

Including this one...

It is...
Till it isn't...

That's simply another idea...
Of better... bigger...
Sounds real nice...
Selfless doormats is it, too...!!
Those that are... simply are...

I know I was...

Till I wasn't...

LOL...

Tried really hard not to be...

A scurried attempt at now being this shiny, brave new thing...

It didn't work...
Oh...

Tears...

And thereby hangs another tale...

Any attempt at replacing one idea about yourself with another...
Well...
Is the belief in the mentally fabricated self...

And apart from it...

There isn't one...

Circling within the dream...
She learnt to pirouette perfectly...

What is not included in the gambit of "being human"...

Yes...

It's all the dream...

Ideas upon ideas...
All made up...

Seeking ideas of perfection... of what this should look like...

Tears...

Or not look like...

Across the board...
Humanity...
The best and worst life has to offer...

A few days ago...
Anger rose in me...
Of an intensity, that would put rage to shame...

I was shocked to the core of my being...!!
That I was even capable of it...

And whence had I abhorred it so... in another...
Lay in me too...

I just kept mumbling to my self...
"It's just unacceptable... just unacceptable..."
And kept shaking my head from side to side...

The core of my being ripped to shreds...

And I wept tears of blood... that would inundate an ocean...

I guess... no one's exempt...
Shift or no shift...

And when all was lost...
And no ground beneath the feet...
Heck and no feet...
And no brownie points for Being...

A pretender under many guises...
I AM the biggest con-act in town...

Dressed as a cop...
Trying to catch a thief...

A lot is lost in translation when we can't see each other's hearts...

And love guided her footsteps...
To places she'd never been...

To the dark corners of her heart...
Where she'd hid...

Face to face with herself...
In all shades of blue and pink...

A rainbow exploded...
And she disappeared in a wink...

And she flung her clothes to the wind...
Running naked like a mad woman...

No description fit...

And she laughed and cried...
A new born babe...

It ends where it began...
It was ever so...

And all notions of emptiness and fullness...
Cried in the dark...

As she wept and laughed...
A candle in the wind...

So love me tender...
Love me sweet...

~~Monica Dayakar
~~13/01/2016

 

 

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Byron Katie - No such thing as enlightenment

 

“If you understand that the world isn’t separated into self and other, you’ll see very clearly that there is no such thing as enlightenment. There can’t be. After all, who is there to be enlightened? You would have to be someone before you could experience enlightenment. There would have to be a self to get free. But (imaginary) selves don’t get free. It’s true that when you wake up from this trance, you’re free of all suffering. But saying it that way still points to a “someone”, a being who is supposedly “awakened.” It’s only when you see the Buddha as a separate self that you can form the concept that he’s enlightened. All these spiritual concepts are just creations of mind.”

“The thoughts are what allow the I to believe that it has an identity. When you see that, you see that there’s no you to be enlightened. You stop believing in yourself as an identity, and you become equal to everything.”

“Nothing has ever happened but a thought.”

“It’s all a projection of mind. To imagine that there is anything outside the mind is pure delusion.”

“Whatever people say or do, how can you be upset with them when you know that they’re projections of your own mind? When the mind realizes this, there’s nothing to project itself as. Even the mind is its own theory. There’s no one to be upset. There’s only mind playing in the apparent world of itself. The Buddha-mind can never be stuck in the nonexistent past or future. So it’s impossible that it would ever experience anything but the joy that comes out of that understanding. The fact is that you’ve never reacted to someone else. You project meaning onto nothing, and you react to the meaning you yourself have projected. Loneliness comes from an honest place—you’re the only one here. There are no humans. You’re it. When you question your thoughts, you come to realize that. It’s the end of the world—the joyful end of a world that never existed in the first place.” 

 

https://thework.com/
 

Aldous Huxley - Lightly

 

"It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly.
Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days…
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling…"

 

 

Aldous Huxley - Island  

 

 

 

Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī - The River of Wine

 

 O Beloved, upon this river of wine, launch our boat-shaped cup,
And into this river throw those weeping with envy, too.

Winebringer, throw a cask of wine into my boat,
For without that–for forty days and nights on the open sea–
I will die of thirst.

I am lost in this city and can no longer find the Winehouse door.
Please help me to find that street again where Love resides.

Bring me a cup of wine that is dark red and smells like musk.
Don’t bring me that expensive brand that tastes like money
and smells like lust.

Even though I am drunk and worthless, be kind to me,
And on this dark heart shine the light of Your smile.

If it’s sun at midnight that you desire, throw the veil from
The face of the rose, and you will have all the light you need.

If I die, don’t let them bury me in a dusty grave;
Take my corpse to the Winehouse and throw me into a cask of wine!

Hafiz, if you have had enough of this world and all its violence,
Then take up the cup, and from the inside let this liquid love make peace.

 

 

Rabindranath Tagore - "The morning sea of silence..."

 

    The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

    We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

    The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.

    My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation in the shadow of a dim delight.

    The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.

    At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!

Gitanjali #48

Thanks to

Owlcation

Jean Klein - In communion with all things

 

"It is important to see how we live mainly in our heads. 

Think with your whole body, feel with your whole body. 

In the whole feeling, the global sensation, 

you go into your room and touch your whole room. 

You go outside and touch the clouds, the trees, the water. 

You do not live in isolation.  

In your radiation you are in communion with all things. 

In this expansion there is no place for the ego 

because the ego is a contraction. 

Love is expansion, a feeling of spaciousness."

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī - The buoyancy

 

 

 Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.

I tried to keep quietly repeating,
No strength but yours,
but I couldn’t.

I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
But who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That’s how I hold your voice.

I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.

I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!

The sky is blue. The world is a blind man
squatting on the road.

But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.

A great soul hides like Muhammad, or Jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows him.

To praise is to praise how
one surrenders to the emptiness.

To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.

So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It’s a total waking up!

Why should we grieve that we’ve been sleeping?
It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been unconscious.

We’re groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness around you,
the buoyancy.

from Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce

 

 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Little Prince Poem

 

And what, exactly, is that metaphorical thorn for you?
 
“It's madness to hate all roses
because you got scratched with one thorn,

to give up all dreams
because one of them didn't come true,

to give up all attempts
because one of them failed.

It's folly to condemn all your friends
because one has betrayed you,

to no longer believe in love
just because someone was unfaithful
or didn't love you back,

to throw away all your chances to be happy
because something went wrong.

There will always be another opportunity,
another friend,
another love,
a new strength.

For every end,
there is always a new beginning.....

And now here is my secret,
a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart
that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye."