The cry of the jiva: a poem

A young black man walked into the train,
was dressed as young people do,
the train was not that full,
as it was a holiday.


He walked in,
the doors closed,
said the automatic announcer:
"les portes se ferment" (or doors are closing),
or something like that.

The train started moving.
He did not sit down.
Then it happened.
He started crying.

This was not a usual sobbing
by hiding the tears behind the eyes
and turning away from onlookers.

This was crying,
loud crying,
pure and simple.

Just as kids do,
when they want something,
and not too unlike lovers kissing each other passionately,
as they usually do in this part of this world,
without care and abandon.

He did not stop crying,
the crying just got louder.
People, did not care,
even if they did, they turned their
eyes away.
French callousness, as opponents as
people on the other side of the channel,
(or the ocean) may say.
I do not simply know if they were gifted
to turn their ears off too!

The crying continued,
then it sparked in me.
It was no usual crying.
It was the Jiva crying.
The reason being separation from its source!

The Jiva was crying due to fear
because it had forgotten its source.

Not due to the source's fault that it had happened.
Not due to the Jiva's fault that it had happened.
It had happened to to a false-superimposition.
What caused the it?
A wise man said: beginning-less ignorance.

How to end it?
Just watch it.
It will go away,
simply because it never was.

The jiva will merge in the source,
if it wants to,
the moment it wants to.

The Jiva was always the source,
the source was never the Jiva.
the source always was the source.

Before source,
after source
in between the source.

What a maya!
Om Shanthi!

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Emily: I had no time to hate

Possibly, my most favorite poem of the woman in white (or the Bartleby page for Emily Dickinson):

I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.

From: Selected Poems Of Emily Dickinson: Searing Vision of Life, Passion, Death and Beyond.

Here is an index of her first lines from Bartleby. Read the rest of this entry >>

Hafiz: Now is the Time

My friend Elliott, pinned the poem "Now is the Time" by Hafiz (a 14th century mystic/poet from Persia) outside my door:

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

Thanks Elliott!
==
By coincidence, while commenting on Pippa's Song by Browning, Atanu remembers Hesse's Siddhardha saying to Govinda: “The world is perfect at every moment, Govinda.”

Here is more poetry by Hafiz. Read the rest of this entry >>