Walk of life

Walk of life                                                                                                  

Do we not all go by God’s grace

whatever walk of life we tread?

Grace to counter the dominance of Mind,

Maya’s deception, the dishonesty

of an ego without compunction. 

These malefic three creating the illusion

within each ordinary human being

of superiority, distinction, enislement

and the resulting blame and disavowal of others.

Jesus, Baba, Saint Francis each embraced lepers

in our shared humanity but also as a symbol

of the disfigurement and adulteration

each of us suffer, must uncover

and accept in ourselves and others.

We’ve been tricked out of our humility

and prohibited from our righteous service

as the slaves of God we could be, the slaves

to Mercy and Grace and eternal Oneness.

O child of God, the difficult-to-grasp truth is

that we all receive the same beneficent grace of God.

A bodhisattva effect

A bodhisattva effect                                                                                     

It’s selfish to desire liberation (however phrased):

union, bliss, realization; to be free from affliction

when it means abandoning in our attainment

our loved ones (as well as the whole of humanity).

Yet, how might an imperfect,

in-the-flesh sufferer offer any assistance

toward liberating others while hopelessly

entangled in the same snare?

The object of liberation is not our human selves,

but the Godly Self within each of us –

the cleaving of the bonds, the clearing of the veils

that bind the true Self to Illusion;

that prevent Truth from knowing Itself as True.

Surely if we are One, with every individual liberation

there is a bodhisattva effect of some sort

beyond the incarnated self, a universal

further shifting of the tides, one day to sweep

every entrapped soul out to sea; to dissolve

(for however long forever is)

the illusory separation of God from God.

O child of God, use imagination and rationalization

to keep you focused on the eventual Reunion.

Eternal Wanderer

Eternal Wanderer

O Lord, the life You have given!

Deeper and richer than I could have ever imagined.

People judge this dull exterior.

They don’t know my secret life:

the narrow mountain paths

we walk together, my Beloved and I.

They’ve never seen the heart’s sky open,

moon and constellations shining above that sea.

His luminous Presence ebbs and rises,

its dark waters rolling through my chest.

Love seeks a traveling companion.

Must be willing to gamble.

O child of God, throw in with that Eternal Wanderer.

Embark together on the mystical journey to Self.

                                      (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

A tinge of truth

A tinge of truth                                                                                           

I’ve called it as I’ve seen it and though it seems

I’ve acquired a bit of knowledge along the way,

there’s no need to amend my previous assertions

because everything on the path is true

at one point or another and it does not become

false later, merely belayed or transcended. 

Meanwhile, the truth of my Self

(the seed from whence this poetry arises)

is inviolable, untouchable and eternal. 

These poems concern illusion,

only hinting at the Truth beyond.

All I know of God is a hint, a beauty,   

a faint, brief suggestion of That  

which is unknowable and indescribable.

O child of God, words fail you again

yet there’s a tinge of truth in every poem your write.

Take a hike

Take a hike                                                                                                  

Take a hike and don’t stop until you are atop

a distant hill, looking down upon everything,

especially yourself, your thoughts and moods.

Go until you get outside of the dream.

Not a far piece really – a hair’s breadth away;

a hundred millenniums’ distance.

You know you will have arrived when you are

able to view yourself and the world fearlessly

but not at all benumbed or sedated.

All your cleverness will have vanished by then

along with your strategies and worries. 

You’ll be obliged to come up with nothing.

It will all be done for you.  Take a hike

and arrive where you always were,

being the being you truly are,

dreaming the dream from an elevated view

and realize forever you have hiked

and climbed all the way to the journey’s end.

O child of God, get the true perspective

by getting just a hair outside yourself.

Useless braying

Useless braying

How loquacious I have become since I found out God is an Ear.

But my voice resembles a braying mule.

This world is but a dream (You say) – let me dream I awaken,

lying in a ghadi at the foot of Your throne.

The repetition of Your name is a bell sounding

in a distant temple – a call to prayer.

Let me answer with all my strength, until I disappear

within the language of my own poetic renderings.

Let my eloquence turn Your head, Lord, that I might see

the curve of Your cheek, the shape of Your brow.

My prayer today is for my heart to become my throat and mouth

and give forth the sublime music worthy of Your audience.

O child of God, words are useless braying unless they draw

you nearer to Him.  Nothing matters but the Connection.

                                             (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

The perfect aspect

The perfect aspect                                                                                        

Meher said, Together we must love God.

But how might my self ever love

when love by its nature is devoid of self?

I pledge only an allegiance – with which I barter

for protection and prosperity;

for favor in His sight;

peace and health in the body

and promises later of heaven, union, bliss.

What sort of love is this? 

Yet, apparently we must

love God however poorly –

love being the perfect aspect

of our imperfect selves

and God being not only the one

worthy object of love, but in Truth,

the sole Being to love in all of Existence.

O child, love God and through love  

become God.

Mime and pantomime

Mime and pantomime                                                                                  

I don’t have any answers.

I don’t have any questions.  

You know my words before I speak.

I know nothing of Your language.

To my chatter of fearful irrelevancies,

Your replies only echo

my own inadequate vocabulary.

Yet, even with all this, I swear

I am getting nearer to the Truth.

The Truth of You and Your silent Presence.

I don’t know how it works –

this mime and pantomime!

But I beg You, Lord – keep up the conversation. 

Let me hear and come to know better than my own

that voice of Yours not formed by a human mouth

and heard only in the broken-open human heart.

O child of God, Meher’s silence forms the one Word

you have been ever longing to hear.

Distant homeland

Distant homeland

These ghazels I write and songs of praise,

do they bring me nearer to You?

Do they soften my heart?  Or Yours?

Draw my mind away from illusory distractions?

Or draw Your nazar upon me?  Is my spirit,

by mere words and music, attuned more closely to Yours?

It makes no difference.  I write these ghazels,

the Baba songs, too, because it gives me comfort.

A soldier on the battlefield presses the photograph

of his sweetheart to his chest;

a grieving mother clings to the blanket of her dead child;

a refugee sings songs of his distant homeland.

Comfort from an opportunity lost;

an attempt to voice longings that are beyond words.

O child of God, why would you ever think these ghazels

          and songs are your gift to Him?

They are His gifts to you.

                                         (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)                 

The next rising phenomenon

The next rising phenomenon                                                                        

Everything comes from nothing and goes back.

From nowhere, anger, for instance, appears

and briefly I claim it.  I am anger until it fades

and I become whatever next appears.

So it is with all experience.  It rises, I identify with it;

it fades and I latch onto the next rising phenomenon.

Even physical existence apparently comes and goes this way –

comes from nothing each moment and each moment returns

creating the illusion of continuity and substance.

And in all of this coming and going,

where is there room for I, me, my and mine?

Everything comes from nothing and goes back.

Attaching myself to this procession of experiences,

I call that me.  I am that.  That is mine.

If I yell and shake my fist at God,

it is God shaking His fist at Himself,

my raised voice as meaningless and natural as thunder,

my shaking fist a tree branch in a brisk wind.

O child of God, in all of infinite existence

there is no room for the separate self.

The idol

The idol                                                                                                       

How full of virtue is the false self! 

How easily it hides among its subtleties,

conjuring up on demand any and all

righteous attributes to further its own cause.

Empathy, benevolence, patience, generosity –

you name it – the false self has it in store.

An impostor to the aspirant as well as to others.

If you don’t know yet how low the ego can go

and are not frightened by it, then you remain,

o pilgrim, outside the palace court,

far from the renunciation required,

the urgency and the heart to break free

from the tyranny and manipulation of the idol

which dominates your existence.

O child of God, turning to the Beloved usually

involves an intense disenchantment with one’s self.

Lips You have kissed

Lips You have kissed

Love invades the heart, flooding the ruins.

Everything drenched and drowned!

Sick on the world’s wine,

I’ve stained myself with cheap desires;

brought home the stench of disreputable taverns.

Vulgar songs taint lips You have kissed.

Yet You open Your arms.  Whisper my pet name.

My heart breaks again along old fault lines.

On Your shoulder, I rest my head,

soaking Your sadra with tears.

O child of God, let His forgiveness unbind you.

You’re under His wing now, the Faithful One.

                                   (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

The beginning of surrender

The beginning of surrender                                                                        

I can’t do this alone.  I’m no warrior.

I’m a lover lost in his own dream; no match

for my ageless opponent of which my Lord

has given me a harrowing and disheartening glimpse.

Thank God, I’m not at that one’s mercy (he has none)

but at the mercy of  the Father of Mercy.

My orders now are to wrap myself in my Lord’s bright flag;

allow my enemy to languish outside the gates. 

With this method little valor is required,

yet few lovers take it on until each is shown

the bottomless depravity of the enemy within.

An incomprehensible battle it is

to the death and beyond,

but it’s no longer mine to fight. 

Such is the beginning of surrender.

Only the Beloved with His divine grace,

His sure swift sword can be the One

to gain the ultimate victory.

O child of God, one of the path’s inherent difficulties

is the divided loyalty of the lover. 

The only Way

The only Way                                                                                              

The Lord of Mercy is wielding His sword,

deflating my pretensions, exposing my duplicity,

pointing out irrefutably what a villain

I am, have been, ever will be. 

Behind these whitewashed walls,

my egregious sins are buried in the backyard,

disowned and denied even to myself.

The reflection in His unsheathed sword

reveals myself to me.  He allows no turning aside.

And thus I am nearer to His grace and expertise –

the only Way there is to deconstruct this sad contradiction,

get me whittled down to the one worthy purpose 

for which and for Whom I was created –

to serve my Lord, a slave of His love.

O child of God, fear not His honest blade

slicing through the bindings of Maya.

Companionship

Companionship

A wonderful quote of Yours from a half-century ago.

I prefer the gesture You made this morning over breakfast –

the gesture of love and forgiveness:

a welling up from the heart, an overflowing

pulled from the chest by Your lovely hands.

After all these years, I no longer come to You

for guidance; I come to You for companionship.

You give what cannot be taught . . . or learned.

Courage, poise, faith, patience – these qualities

do not enter the heart through ear nor eye.

Awakening involves being broken open.

What words can accomplish that?

O child of God, words of the Avatar are precious gems,

but His companionship is the treasure without equal.

                                       (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Dust-speck existence

Dust-speck existence                                                                                    

I have been made aware that Your universal work,

done in seclusion long ago, included me,

not as a dust-speck in the cosmos

but as a companion on the new life road.

Those last human years, painfully at prayer,

alone in the bus or in Your room,

fist pounding to keep the connection – with me,

among others in our gross plane lives.

I was long in the body by then, halfway around the world

and in some unfathomable, intimate way, You reached me

through a childhood and adolescent Jesus,

revealing the ruin and insolvency of the world,

retrieving me from my own seclusion and dust-speck existence

to reunite with You, consciously connected,

moving briskly down the road toward freedom

from the bindings of self, body, time, ignorance and fear.

O child of God, everything is happening here and in the moment.

The Godman knows no boundaries of space or time.

Very much in play

Very much in play                                                                                       

Years ago I decided it would be best

to surrender to my Beloved,

trying ever after to talk my heart into it. 

Intractable, quavering, non-committal,

what could I say at this point to sway the jury?

So these days I keep quiet.

It’s an unhanding now I know,

a facing up, a sorting out;  

a painful, bit by bit, incursion and endeavor,

yielding by inches the sovereign native soil.

It would be best, I long ago decided             

to surrender to Meher Baba and since that day

His wondrous, enigmatic unfolding within me

is still very much in play.    

O child of God, you’ve never had the sole authority

to so radically decide your fate.

Sunlit roses

Sunlit roses

Birds singing at daybreak, the taste of God in their beaks.

Shimmering light settles on the ever-flowing stream.

I walk these narrow streets as Your companion.

Hand in hand, this burdened city turns holy.

There’s a longing for You in the corners of my heart.

Nothing washes it out.  No amount of tears.

The Brahmin seeking purity missed my Beloved,

last seen in the marketplace handing out prasad.

O Lord, grant me the poverty of the moment –

poised to follow anywhere, the whim of my Beloved.

Forget notions of love, struggle and triumph.

Nothing’s worth remembering but God.

O child of God, look for the Radiant One among sunlit roses.

The flight of His pink coat along the garden path.

                                     (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

The auspices of Meher

The auspices of Meher                                                                                

To live my best in this dream life,

I am told by faith (until I awaken)

to trade it in for a different sort of dream,

shrugging off the old, taking up the new

under the aegis of the Perfect Seeker,

unheralded and itinerant

through the heart of the world but not of it.  

Guard my tongue, ignore my compulsions;

forsake perceptions; my opinions of no more

consequence than the peeping of a bird.  

Drift through the New Life with a Companion divine,

the one true Friend, nurturing that relationship

and fellowship until I awaken my Self

at dream’s end to the promised eternal Reality of God.

O child, abandon yourself to the auspices of Meher,

the One and only Truth there is.

God's endless existence

God’s endless existence                                                                                

Done 100%, He said;

all that urgent business

fitted into one lifetime.

While on the eternal side of the veil

tranquility ever reigns.

The Avatar has His mission

over the cycles of time, while God

has no unfinished business whatsoever.

Perfect equanimity knows no urgency.

No need for us to grow fearful or impatient

with God’s endless existence

and Baba’s completed work all plotted out,

unfolding inviolate and precise,  

each soul having already arrived on schedule

at the same timeless moment

in the realm of the perfect and eternal.

O child of God, illusion makes possible God’s game.

Don’t get caught up in its imperatives.

An uncut stone

An uncut stone

You propped up Your feet

and made Yourself at home in my body.

You lit a fire in my chest to warm Yourself by.

Under that silent, persistent flame, my heart is melting.

My life can be divided into two parts:  when You are

with me and waiting for when You are with me.

O Lord, the silence between us has grown deeper –

and more delicious!

The silence of a jewel cutter poised above an uncut stone.

I have vague memories of the time before

this madness struck – a man drenched in sorrow,

the constricted voice in his ear of constant dread.

My Beloved, Your dulcet silence is drowning out my fear.

O child of God, look beyond the chisel and hammer

to the exquisite gems the Beloved has gathered in His purse.

                                          (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)