A GREAT POEM

A MELLENIAL MEDITATION



I am born in this body
through a dark and dreary passage
groping into a world already in the dark.
I see the scene on the screen.
I cry, I feel I sleep.
I forget the screen.
Now my mother then my father
fill the screen.
I talk, I walk I crawl the vast expanse of my crib,
and chatter till I am fed, again,
secure under the blanket.
Darkness is so comforting.

I learn the language, the idiom of the world,
feeling my way through the jungle of notions
and sentiments.
I study the Vedas, sastras, the puranas,
and the classics, grammar, logic,
and philosophy. relentless words
labyrinthine that shroud the Reality.

I see my body. I like it. I love it.
I take care of it as it crumbles
right under my nose.
I wash it, aromatize it, decorate it,
as the winds wither it.

I look around and like what I see.
I smell the flowers,
and watch the rainbow melt
into the liquid sky.
The sun smiles, the rains drench, the stars shine
and the seas moan in utter ecstasy.

NOT HAPPY

The mind churns, the heart races.
I like some things, hate others.
Feelings, fears, emotions, desires,
strange modifications of the mind
that haven’t been there before.
I seek pleasure, shun pain.
I make friends, feel the pangs of flesh.
I indulge. It’s all so real.
Passion guides and instinct rules.
I see the scene, the screen is blurred.


I work, work to live, live to eat,
and eat to indulge.
The body takes charge and controls the mind.
I work, I rest. I win, I lose.
I get me a partner, a helpmate,
to double my rapture,
to have all I want and more.
I persue more happiness working harder
making more and spending more,
aiming to suck up all the pleasures of the world
in one giant gulp.

I sing I dance I write,
I scale the heights of art info
and emptiness most empty.
I build forts and mansions,
I dare the mysteries of the skies
and dive into oceans to steal their secrets.
I probe the laws of nature
I distil the alchemy of the elements
and unravel the implicit formulae of existence
I peer countless miles into space
seeking the alleged Creator.
Having found none
I feel that I am greater than He or She
as the case may be.

STILL NOT HAPPY

Miracles do not a seer make,
when he fails to see his own mistake.

I have many a brother and sister,
aunts and uncles,
and children and children’s children,
manservants and maids to please.
But I am alone at night, though consorted,
for reasons beyond explanation.
What is company that is least companionable?
What is company for one who remains most alone?
And the children get sick and the old timers drop,
and sometimes the young ones too.
The heart aches and the mind follows suit.
The mind agitated agitates the spirit.

The arts evanesce and the sciences cease
and literatures languish
though I still am,
breathing through a thousand noses
eating through a thousand mouths
and merging in a thousand minds.
I give up I care no more.
I do and not do the things I do,
I give up the fruits of my labor
so others may gain, I give up
my stake in the action
and gain relief beyond satisfaction.
The end all is the new be-all.

The fog clears and heart stops
and I can see where I’ve been
and where I need to be,
Where it’s really Real.

I think I am dead.
The limbs do not move, the senses do not sense,
the organs do not act.
Darkness ensues presently.
I look within me and take note of it all.
Nothing matters now.
I finally gain control over it all,
more alive than when I was alive,
now that I am dead to the outer world.

I dive into the core of my being
where I disappear for all eternity
and beyond. I feel
nothing see nothing hear nothing.

I JUST AM

conscious, blissful, higher than the transient worlds
and ephemeral gods.
Fire doesn’t burn me nor winds dry
seas don’t drown me nor weapons hurt.
I am when I don’t think that I am,
when I don’t know that I am.

My questions cease my quest’s done,
my doubts vanish, leaving answers
clear as crystal.
No darkness lingers in Superior Light,
no question rise in Superior Knowledge,
the knowledge that I am I and no other,
that I alone exist and no other,
I am all and all is me.
I create all in the nooks
of my mind which therefore
cease when the mind ceases, and I remain forever.
Time is but a shadow of the mind
as is space which
ceases when the periphery
is consumed by the center.

The world is only a wink away,
but wholly separated by that wink
for one whose winks destroy it
and establish the Self instead.
Such a one is the master of the world,
it’s mighty creator and destroyer-at-will.
The world is an idea? Whose?
The world is a thought? Who thought it up?
It’s leela? Sport for whom?

First I am.
Not the I that was born,
but the I that’s always been.
I am therefore I think I act I speak.
And after I have thought enough
and spoken enough and acted enough,
I still am,
happy without seeking to be,
and blissful without trying to be.
in the Perennial Present,
the Pure Consciousness
unchanging and unchangeable,
ageless timeless nameless formless.


_____________


From the mountain Path
(TiruvannamaalaiRamanasramam)
Ardanna issue 2000