Remnants of the Way

Remnants of the Way                                                                                 

Once the Way is lost, Lao Tzu taught,

then comes virtue – birthing innumerable sins,

the far-reaching and the trivial –

pride, disdain, judgment,

envy, division, exclusion . . .

inevitably creating its opposite;   

setting up the incessant battle within.

All because we have strayed

from the original mandate; abandoned God

as constant Companion, inner arbiter and guide, 

creating instead our own world

from the remnants of the Way,

striving without wisdom, purity or strength

to live by (and constantly failing) our own rules.

O child of God, the Way, the Truth and the Life

is the lost inheritance of each soul.

The sum of existence

The sum of existence                                                                    

Seven times seventy, instructed Jesus.

Because a grudge-bearer like myself

is not really who I am and the trespasser

is not to blame and truth is honored

in the surrender of forgiveness. 

The culprit being a provisional, apparently

essential, impostor sorting out and managing

the mind’s disparate sensations

but errant in its identification with the body

and mind creating within each of us

an artificial separation from the sum of existence.

Self-perpetuating, without compunction,

navigating illusion, keeping us rigidly

to the karmic path, but that ill-borne personality,

impermanent and transitional,

is not (as per my Lord) who I am.

I am the Self, a God-infused,

love-instilled, eternal ocean-drop of soul.

O child of God, compare the Oneness of God

to the cramped duality of your inner being.

Meherabad Hill

Meherabad Hill

A song rises from the crest of Meherabad Hill

and enters, also, my heart; sets my eyes to weeping.

A sacred rose opened perfectly in the garden

one February morning;

the honeybees flitting from flower to flower.

The banyan trees whisper to lovers climbing the Hill,

but only to the quiet ones, listening already with their hearts.

That glorious morning I entered a proper pilgrim into Baba’s Tomb.

Hours later, I emerged a drunkard, singing songs of the Tavern.

Motor traffic on the road to Ahmednagar, shouts and loud laughter.

All those people hurrying past the Tomb of my Beloved.

The night is deep and jeweled.  From this Hill I could touch the moon.

Someone already has – leaving His prints on the old man’s face.

O child of God, at Arti you wept through all three prayers.

How did you come to this place after so many years of wandering?

This old house

This old house                                                                                           

This old house grumbles

in the wee hours of wind and rain;

my body griping, too, lying awake –

cramped muscles, aching back,

the roil of digestion, urgency in the bladder.

Running through the usual worries, my mind,

distraught, complains of a lack of diversion

while my heart aches for refuge and peace.

But there is another part of me awake,

unmolested by all the bother –

the core of me which You have unveiled,

employing these awakenings for communion,

solace and a centering upon You,

the warmth of Your presence flowing

from the hub of my being to hush and settle

all the rancor of the peripheries.

O child of God, the storm didn’t wake you.

Your Lord has called you to His court.

A short, private prayer

A short, private prayer                                                                               

I am what anyone takes Me to be, said Meher Baba.

The Highest of High (Who alone exists)

apparently reflecting and responding

to every soul according

to their existing awareness.

When the atheist declares my Lord

a madman or fraud, he is telling the truth

as per the evidence of his individual perception.

When the sophisticate smiles with condescension;

when the Buddhist nods, agreeably non-committal;

when the Christian, Muslim, Jew shouts blasphemy,

it is of no occasion for dispute or refutation

but instead the moment for a short, private prayer –

thank You, Lord, for revealing Yourself to me.

O child of God, your business is to love Him.

His business is everything else.   

I can never go back

I can never go back

How can I repay Your kindness?
If not for You I would have gone

through this life stone cold sober.

In from the desert, I requested water;

You gave me wine.  I thirsted
without knowing what I was thirsty for.

How wonderful to learn my life is under Your fingertips!

Drunkenness allowed for singing and dancing;

the inner fire roared and soon
I was naked among Your lovers.

Caring nothing for what people thought,

I cared only for Your wine and its fire.

Dawn came and my world shrank back into itself.

But I can never go back to sobriety.  I can never go back.

O child of God, nurse His wine when He gives it.

Know that he offers something far more precious than wine.

                                       (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

If life is a prayer

If life is a prayer                                                                                         

You stood up for us – even towards the end

when You couldn’t walk without help.

Insisted on Eruch reading the prayers

and You rose to participate,

mandali on either side for support,

gesturing for Eruch to go ever faster

because of the strain.  You are

named Ezad the only one worthy of worship.

If life is a prayer I am nearing my amen.

Early on, as I was making it up, seemingly

without support from You, it never amounted

to more than a periodic, desperate plea. 

But over the years, You’ve shown me how to pray,

(not done with me yet), incrementally

changing the heart of my prayers from I to You,

a metaphor for You becoming more and more

the heart of whoever it is offering my prayer

to Whoever it is Who receives it.

O child of God, the perfect prayer is a silent,

continuous obeisance from the very core.

Until Union

Until Union                                                                                                 

Complaint as prayer is an impertinence,

entreaty a lack of faith and petition an assertion of self.

Praise is most often insincere – rote or circumstantial,

precarious over time.  The proper expression of prayer

(apparently) is a continuous heartfelt gratitude,

not only for the gift of consciousness

but also for the intervention and manifestation

of the divine within our humanness.

Yet, one day gratitude and its attendant praise,

like complaint and appeal, will become obsolete –

lingering evidence of our self-conceit –

our appraisal, preference and approval

of God and His game. One day gratitude

will yield to an incomparable submission –

the selfless unity of love for God

in which nothing else could possibly exist.  

O child of God, cease entreaty; embrace gratitude

until Union comes to sweep it all away.

The ultimate cosmic kiss

The ultimate cosmic kiss

Your kiss blown across space.

Something so ethereal bearing such fire.

You tease me with this poetry:  Words,

You say, are for those with distance between them.

In one great moment, the wall fell.

Too soon, I began building it back, stone by stone.

Love, love, love.  Did Your hands ever tire

          of making that gesture?

When so few understood Your divine vocabulary.

Love, You answer, is the only word worth repeating.

Now that My hands are still, My mouth will open.

Will it shape, o Lord, God’s original Word?

Or merely form for Your lovers the ultimate cosmic kiss?

O child of God, the Beloved cherishes one thing above His lovers –

the snakes and ladders of His Divine Game.

                                      (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Goodwill

Goodwill                           

My Lord, being perfect, said,

give Me what I don’t have –

your imperfections, urging us

to lay them freely at His feet,

not keeping them egregiously with us

nor leaving them for Him to painfully extract.  

Still, every personal quirk,

tendency and failing that shapes us

(even as we seek to give them away)

shall (apparently) remain with us to the end.

It’s not perfection we shall develop but love –

a universal goodwill, a generosity toward others,

a natural, unforced and spontaneous

flowing from imperfect hearts –                

this being but another humble step

on the long road to Realization.

O child of God, to come under the Master’s care

is to abandon all rancor and grievance.

Rawhide and bones

Rawhide and bones                                                                                    

My mind is at a gallop in a runaway herd of horses,

a stampede through the middle of town

having lured my unhitched steed along with them.

I leap into the saddle, seize the reins,

halt my mount at the edge of town

as the wild herd disappears in a cloud of dust.

One day, You promise, my old horse

will never leave the barn,

(innumerable lifetimes from now)

whittled down to rawhide and bones.

In the meantime my occupation,

my devotion, is to You, the holy part of me,

the true part, working patiently

to rope, break and hobble the feral steed.

O child of God, you are a child also

of Sunday school mornings and Saturday matinees.

The dark-red goblet

The dark-red goblet

This morning the wells at Meherabad overflowed,

threatening to drown all inhabitants.

My little boat was swamped by a great wave.

Can my heartsong be heard above the ocean’s roar?

When the truth of His rain reaches our ears,

we’ll be drenched, o pilgrims, inside and out.

The Beloved is pouring His wine!

Offer the dark-red goblet of your heart.

Nothing to cling to; nowhere to go

but down into the vasty blue depths.

O child of God, drown in the Ocean of Love,

leaving not a trace of yourself on this rugged, illusory shore.

                                       (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

After the last ki jai

After the last ki jai                                                                                              

Certain rituals have I adopted

to commune with my Lord

between protracted stretches

where I lose Him as companion –

left in the coil of a rosary,

between the pages of a book;

or after the last ki jai. 

Lost somewhere from here to there

as I wend my solitary way.

Certain rituals have I custom made

to bridge the episodic estrangement,  

reacquaint myself with His everpresent

solace and mercy; rekindle the hope

of a promised prospective communion

where I shall remain continuously and then eternally

awake and aware within His holy presence.

O child of God, counter your isolation

by embracing your own non-existence.

A sea of grace

A sea of grace                                                                                             

Empty your heart of everything

of which you are not certain, said my Lord. 

Then, you will find Me there.

True faith, apparently, comes as a last resort,

resounding in the dark alley you’ve been chased down,

even as you pledged over your shoulder

the undying quality of your faithless love.

It matters little how you got there.

It’s all grace from here on out

as you see that it was always grace,

a sea of grace, where you will be swept along

by the tides until you drown.

O child of God, do you really want

the fate of your soul to be left in your own hands?

Your wine has the power

Your wine has the power

Your wine has the power to obliterate my world.

Yet subtle and delicious is Your wine.

Tonight, my chest is soaked red from the heart’s goblet

that tilts and spills whenever You draw near.

Have You come in response to my morning prayers?

Or to my wailing and weeping in middle of the night?

Or have You come of Your own accord,

to work with the clay You find?

It doesn’t matter.  You’re here now.

Take liberties with me while I’m drunk and helpless.

Fashion me into a deeper vessel, o Lord,

then fill my throat with Your wine until I drown.

Let me go out of this world oblivious to everything

but Your stranglehold, Your blade lodged between my ribs.

Fear not, child of God, once True Love comes to the door

obliteration is the only possible result.

                                      (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Origin and remedy

Origin and remedy                                                                                                

Siddhartha chose not the path of faith but of inquiry;

a quest not for God but for the cause of human suffering. 

   

It was truth he was after – truth of origin and remedy;

truth with its tacit certitude, whatever it turned out to be.

Centuries later, I followed truth down the Buddha path,

not a thought in the world for God, love or fidelity,

until my Lord took me aside

and said, I am the Truth you seek;

the One Who prompts these questions in you. 

Now my quest is full-bodied, of heart and head,

faith and inquiry into the truth of Meher Baba

and the ancient path to His holy feet.

O child of God, pray one day your inquiries

become kindling for the roaring fire of conviction.

The chime

The chime                                                                                                     

The chime is at the mercy of the breeze,

too lightweight to resist the merest ripple,

incapable of sustaining a mute immobility

and thus its music and silence are never its own.

Repeatedly, stirrings of ire and sanctimony

jostle the chime within me, shattering all composure.

Yet, its clang and clamor is not my own!

It comes from a tempestuous source to which I have

for ages been a slave and which I now renounce;

seek to still and soften its influence; diligently

labor to insulate my gossamer susceptibilities

from the harsh winds of Maya and Mind. 

O child of God, the source of discordant music

is your cracked and misshapen instrument of self.

Wine

Wine

A fire engulfs the heart.  Charred stubble for new seeds.

Your smoldering arrow is buried somewhere in those ruins.

I throw a glance over my shoulder –

to make sure You are following Your prey.

No one understands our relationship –

I, least of all.

You’ve sewn me to the hem of Your robe –  

holy thread soaked in holy wine;

                                                                                                        

in the dust of Your sandal prints, wine;

rose-fragrant wine from the garlands of Your chair

and from Your Tomb, wine –

flooding the landscape every time they open the doors.

O child of God, sometimes the Beloved fills your glass,

but the sober approach is most times required.

                                        (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Brimful quiet

Brimful quiet                                                                                              

Humility never crosses their minds –

the humble ones, nor envy their hearts,

allowing the world to go its way,

having eschewed complexity

for truth’s simple fare. 

Traded their wine for water

and drink of it deeply,

upholding soberness and clarity. 

Like large stones on the wayside,

they let nothing sway them

or carry them away;

add nothing nor subtract.

And if they are waiting for God,

they do so without clamor or petition,

their threadbare lives brimful quiet, 

cherishing the lack, doing without

the things they have long determined

have no substance or worth.

O child of God, speak of the humble ones

with all the humility you can muster.

The burning grounds

The burning grounds                                                                                 

As the fabric unravels, the differences laid bare

between the veils of egoism

and humility’s threadbare coat,

I’m painfully aware at every turn

of my habitual (quite human) culpability,

my unforced, everyday defilements of love,

becoming ever more wise to myself and penitent

yet, at each candid moment,

the shame is tinged with joy and relief –

where transgressions once passed unnoticed  

each now is being led onto the burning grounds,

returned to the nothingness they are and always were.

O child of God, part of the inducement of surrender

is the abandonment of guilt and remorse.

Brimful of wine

Brimful of wine

I wander the narrow path, visit the brambles on either side.

Rein me in, o Lord, though the bit chafes.

The Perfect Rose bloomed in a Poona garden.

By nightfall it was gone, the petals wind-scattered.

You’ll come again in seven hundred years.

Will I recognize You and fly into Your arms?

Embrace me now, o Lord, with Your True Self.

Delight my vision from the inside out.

How can my heart balance something so delicate?

The pans of Your scales brimful of wine.

You suggest we have an ancient connection.

Give more clues: sweet whispers, Your lips to my ear.

O child of God, Avatars come and go, yet He is always here.

And you – you were born before the world was made.

                                              (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

The long road home

The long road home                                                                                    

What will it take to dislodge me

from this present way station – 

favorable weather or the threat of a flood?

A vision of heaven or its high jasper walls?

The magnanimity of divine love

or the petty tyranny of the ego?

Agony, death and despair will surely

visit me on the long road home;

pain, failure, disease – every item in fact

on the list pulled out by non-believers

to weigh and measure God must be

run through in one lifetime or another.

Not whether I avoid the travails

but whether I choose (if there is a choice)

to endure them with or without a conscious faith

before I am shunted hopelessly beyond their range,

helpless before the potential mercy

and benevolence of the Holder of the key.

O child of God, if your Father is God

there is no alternative to His manifesting will.

Myself

Myself                                                                                                        

I mention myself as if I know who I am. 

As if I exist in the way I suppose.

Allude to my identity, which has never

revealed itself as to who I might really be.

I’ve never fathomed myself to see how deep I go

or grasped myself to see what I am made of.

Instead, I’ve gone all these years without proof

on the childish assumption that somewhere

under this skull, behind these mortal ears and eyes,

there is a definite, knowable point –

an abiding seat of judgment and resolution which is me,

continually plotting (and lifelong has)

the course of my existence – responsible for who I am,

what I do, what my life has been and will be.

All my life, I have taken myself for granted –

that I exist in the way my mind tells me I exist.

O child of God, to find out who you are

seek an authority above the mind.

The gong at Meherazad

The gong at Meherazad

Having crossed the threshold of the Beloved’s Tomb,

o pilgrims, now we begin to die the only real death.

Shall we stand, arm in arm at the ship’s rail;

watch the familiar landscape recede into the distance?

Shall we sing together as the ship itself sinks

into the fathomless waters of Meher Baba’s Ocean?

There is a muted quality to my heart now,

canceling out sharp pleasures and the allure

          of worldly enchantments

like the deadened gong at Meherazad

that when struck, responds in dull, reluctant tones.

This life is but a dream.  Let me dream of Love,

a great, fiery Love, intense enough to consume the dream itself.

The edges of it are curling now and turning to ash.

Let me awaken in the arms of the Awakener!

O child of God, cling to your Beloved.

His ship will one day plunge over this dream world’s edge.

                                             (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

A gospel fundamental

A gospel fundamental                                                                                 

Raised with Jesus in a fundamental way,

I abandoned later most of my faith,

lured by the usual culprits and intoxications.

It wasn’t Jesus through the hard work days,

the fearsome nights I turned to for comfort.

And now that I am retired from hard work,

my Lord allows nothing much

but faith to be stored in my warehouse, 

the labels dating back to childhood

when grace flowed neck-deep and freely.

A gospel fundamental enough for a child

(whom He suffered to come unto Him) –

faith and innocence necessities,

not to be discarded at the first rail stop

but clung to and employed, carried firmly

into the heart of a faithless world.

O child of God, Meher said (like Jesus)  

you must become, not childish, but childlike.

The One we already are

The One we already are                                                                             

Nothing matters, said my Lord,

but love for God, referring presumably

to the realm of duality,

our unfaithful hearts and false perspectives.

But, is it not God’s love for us

that is of paramount importance –

when without it all is lost?

Perhaps, they are One and the same:

God’s love for us and our love for God.

One and the same.  The melding of hearts.

Perhaps, that is the truth 

we shall one day inherit

when our love becomes

first exclusive and then universal;

when at last through love

we become the One we already are.

O child of God, love divine

surely has everything to do with Union.

Chipping away

Chipping away

I repeat Your holy name –

like chipping a hole in the wall of my cell.

One day, a light will break through.

Much later, I’ll squeeze through myself.

In the meantime, Lord, keep chipping away at me.

The smaller I become, the sooner my escape.

No baggage on this flight!

Nakedness is required to slip through that portal.

But like a true child of Adam,

I’m ashamed of my nakedness.

I should give away all I own

but, Lord, I’m not that magnanimous!

I’m like the monkey who can’t free its hand from the snare –

it won’t loosen its grip on the prize.

O child of God, repeat His name; chip away at the wall.

It’s a sham – like everything else in this prison of illusion.

                                         (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

This old vase

This old vase     
                                                                                         

Even through the faithless years, I’ve prayed, 

(in the tight spots) above the panic’s roar.

These days my prayers are a shared quietude,

a silent acquiescence not so much to God

but to my nature, the innumerable lifetimes

it will take to subdue it.  Asking forgiveness,

all the while believing everything is ordained and necessary.

This old vase won’t hold water, cracks of fear

and well worn desire, all the habitual reasons

for turning away from the truth of God’s existence

to the provisional comforts of my own.

Pure praise, said my Lord, is the best prayer.

But when I can’t pluck up the courage,

muster enough sincerity then I’m left with

displaying the raw vitals of myself,

as much as I dare, for both of us to view,

using Meher’s example of silence

to ask for nothing and receive my wincing due.

O child of God, live so that

your every breath becomes a prayer.

All or nothing

All or nothing                                                                                             

Slowed by age, my relationship

with the Friend has perked up,

wringing out, at times, from the very

heart and marrow, wine and tears.

I harbor no hope, as this intimacy

steadily grows, for a long life,

knowing, by faith, time is a fantasy.

I’ll depart whenever,

at the perfect moment and while my life shall end,

(strictly speaking, by a sort of carefree conviction)

I’ll keep hurtling onward without pause or lapse,

my Companion clutched to my breast,

toward the end and the Goal –

wherever the Truth may take us.

O child of God, all is arranged, all benevolent

or else nothing, nothing, nothing matters at all.

Fruitless tangents

Fruitless tangents

You are the constant One

around which I circle in a labyrinth of lies,

one infidelity after another;

fruitless tangents off the narrow Way.

My mind neglects You, Lord, but my heart

          is continuously calling Your name.

My mind forgets the heart that sustains it.

Constant One, O Heart eternal!

Become constant in my thoughts!

Get it through my thick skull: the memory of You,

of myself; until we become, at last, the One

          who we already are!

O child of God, make Him your Companion,

ever handy, the Constant One, Meher Baba.

                               (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)