The
Original Whim
After
a perfect sweeping and raking
of
the ornamental garden the old Zen monk
shakes
the limb of a slender maple tree until
a
few of its scarlet leaves fall upon the sand.
I
scroll across a video ad of two beautiful couples
in
an outdoor setting sharing a laugh together
and
sipping dark red wine. The video is AI –
perfect,
pristine and phony.
We
want our lives to be perfect,
often
to a point approaching farce.
That
sort of perfection is not for us mere mortals.
Life
is change, growth, discomfort and decay.
Perfection
is static. Perhaps the Original Whim
was
for God to free Himself
from
His own eternal Perfection;
to
shake Himself out of His habitual Exactitude,
to
know and witness Himself bit by bit
in
all His infinite aspects and permutations.
O
child of God, life is not a pond, it’s a river.
And God is the
infinite Ocean of Existence.
Abiding
innocence
I
know now that I loved Jesus
before
I heard His name
which
came to me as a recognition
rather
than an introduction.
Innocence
is a state of unconscious surrender.
It’s
the opposite of ignorance – a deeper understanding.
The
mind over a lifetime tends to become hardened
and
haunted while the heart remains unaffected.
Its
purity prompts the shaming of the mind.
I
loved Jesus as a child and Meher as a man
and
I know intimately now the illusion of time
and
the reality of abiding innocence.
O
child of God, embrace your true self
and return to the
purity of your birth.
My
gravestone
I
don’t mind being old.
It
makes me feel nearer to God,
although
death may come to anyone at any time.
The
door to the afterlife is always open
and
leads to a roundabout just off the cosmic highway.
I’ll
be back! You could put that on my
gravestone
but
I plan not to have one.
A
gravestone is too confining.
Not
just to one plot but to who I was
and
what I am not – an pile of old bones.
A
gravestone is much too small a tablet
to
carry the details of my long, odd life.
So
put me through the fire, collect
and
scatter my ashes anywhere you like.
Everywhere
and nowhere is home
and
I’ll be back . . . until I won’t be any
more.
O
child of God, escape the wheel of birth and death
and return to your one
and only true conception.
Under
God’s purview
All
shall be well, Julian of Norwich assured us.
And
all manner of things shall be well;
which
means that all things are well
in
the timeless now . . . and always have been,
the
anchoress relinquishing sin’s burden
for
God to shoulder and explicate.
All
our various beliefs confuse only the mind.
They
are reconciled neatly in the heart,
the
true crux of the Divine relationship.
Poets
who are given this heart-truth
try
to put it into verse. Musicians into
song,
sculptors
into stone. Painters onto canvas.
The
saints are given it and try to live by it.
Merwan
was granted it and became the Truth.
O
faithful ones, hurry down to the altar and bow
to
your particular Saviour; confess to Him your heart’s desire.
O
children of God! All manner of things are
well
under God’s purview and
always shall be.
The
Arms Everlasting
There
is an illusion named should be
and
an illusion named should not be
and
a truth named what is and it turns out
what
is
(per Meher) is also an illusion.
Humility
is recognizing our shortcomings
and
at the same time feeling our Godhood –
seeing
through the eyes of our true Self
which
are also the eyes of God.
We
are the purity of the witness
rather
than the sins of the self
and
there is not and never has been
a
stain upon our one true immaculate Self.
O
child of God, when searching within or without,
lean heavily upon the
Arms Everlasting.
A
work of Art
Existence
was created (per Meher)
by
a Whim of God. It is a work of Art.
It’s
only purpose or meaning
is
what we assign to it.
Ages
ago, a crowd began to stir
and
tumbled from the frame
to
stand apart from God’s Art –
to
witness, study, admire, critique.
God
has no purpose, said Meher Baba,
and being human has only one purpose –
to
become as purposeless
as
the Whim Itself.
O
child, accept what is right before your eyes –
a whimsical,
dramatic, God-created work of Art.
(painting by Mark Hodges)
Pilgrimage
We
are all wayfarers here and the best part
is
that our intimates, friends and acquaintances
are
in truth our fellow pilgrims
whose
paths we have stumbled upon
and
are briefly sharing – each of us
moving
in the same direction,
toward
the same destination,
slaves
of the One Master,
the
Maker who fashioned us and our world;
each
pilgrim inwardly guided and directed;
answerable
only to the One Who
knows
us intimately and loves us completely.
O
child of God, it’s a long and wondrous journey
through the hills and
vales of your own heart.
Locked
up
I
want to get thin enough
to
slip through the bars of my cell.
But
I don’t know what good
escape
would do me. I am unable
to
view the surrounding terrain
from
my lone high window on the wall.
The
main thing is, whether here or there,
I
would still be securely locked up
in
the embrace of my Beloved.
The
cell is bare but the prisoner
is
an old ascetic and is well content to be so.
I
speak of some sort of escape
but
where in the world would I go?
I
long for an experience
much
more substantial
than
this careworn world can give.
O
child of God, not just the world is careworn. It’s also
the jaded views of
your most persistent impressions.
The
prison of the apparent
I
imagine myself as one of those early astronauts
leaping
about in black and white film on the gray
surface
of the moon and radioing back to earth
(floating
visibly above me in the backdrop)
that
the moon is frigid, barren and bleak,
without
air to breathe; hostile to human life.
And
through this image I see that the universe is my prison,
the
mind and body are my shackles
and
my escape is imperative. O Meher!
Your
silence speaks to our hearts
because
our mind, eyes and ears
have
failed us, words have failed us,
images
and concepts have failed us
in
our perception of the Truth –
the
Truth of Love, of Oneness; of our
own
divinity; the Truth of You.
O
child, for illusory ages God has been waiting
for humanity to
escape the prison of the apparent.
Water
from a nearby well
A
rambling of words in my notebook
to
which I will weed out the excess
and
spruce up what is left.
That’s
the given task
whispered
in my ear
of
which I have little worry or doubt,
as
if I were being sent out with a bucket
to
fetch water from a nearby well.
No
urgency, no fear;
one
day following the next,
content
in the small comforts afforded me.
I
am yet the master of my tasks,
a
deeply appreciated blessing
surrendered
humbly to my Lord
until
and beyond the moment
when
it shall be taken from me.
O
child of God, when your chores are finished,
it means your duty has
been fulfilled.
Tilt-a-Whirl
The
first step toward attaining Realization
is,
perhaps, to abandon the idea entirely
if
the notion is in your head but not in your heart.
The
mind’s true desire is for rescue
not
for Realization which we have
never
experienced and know nothing about.
We
turn hopefully to God for His counsel
and
the first instruction He gives
is
to become helpless and abandon all hope.
Realization,
we are told, is bestowed
only
by Grace (per Meher)
at
God’s sole discretion
and
the desire for Realization it is said,
is
the greatest obstacle to Realization.
We
are instructed to yearn for God
but
not for paradise, for surrender
rather
than triumph, for humility
instead
of attainment; to yearn
not
for life eternal (which we already possess)
but
for the finality of our one true death.
O
child, you have taken a seat on the Tilt-a-Whirl
and wonder why your
world is spinning out of control.
The
Only One
Meher
Baba, the Beloved One,
the
Ancient One, Silent One,
One
without a second,
One
with infinite attributes . . .
descriptive
names, but not for the Parsi youth
the
old woman kissed on the forehead,
the
upright young man formerly known
as
Merwan Sheriar Irani
Who
merged with Oneness and became Oneness
to
exist no more; to exist no more.
Who
returned to the many
without
parting from the One
and
was given a new name –
Compassionate
Father;
Who
lived among men as the Avatar;
whose
primary attribute,
among
His various descriptions,
is
the One in which He alone exists.
O
child of God, impossible to explain in words
the existence of the Only
One worthy of worship.
A
most holy pledge
I
wish I could be content
with
the repetition of Your name.
My
heart is willing
but
my mind is willful,
fixed
in its old habit of ruling the roost,
of
being the forward scout
making
sure every bridge
I
cross can bear the weight.
My
mind doesn’t easily relinquish its authority
nor
abandon its routine sabotage of my heart.
But
I lose You in the repetition of Your name.
I
lose my place in the monologue it becomes.
And
when You grant me some incongruity,
some
paradox to explore, I am off on an adventure
that
very often ends up in a poem.
This
poetry is my remembrance, my meditation,
a
most holy pledge of my faithfulness
until
the moment the two become One.
O
child of God, how overwhelming it is
to picture myself as
a pen held in the Master’s hand.
From
the inside out
God
is a magician with nothing up His sleeve.
Creation
is pulling a rabbit out of a hat
with
no rabbit, no hat and no magician.
Loving
God, apparently,
is
a state of absolute non-attachment;
existence
without perception of it,
annihilation
without unconsciousness;
consciousness
without self.
Oneness
is Love without an object or a recipient,
loving
God from the inside out; from the inside out.
Love
for God is the non-existence of the self;
the
non-existence comprised of everything.
O
child of God, how foolish to attempt
a description of the
Indescribable.
Holy
ground
Ah,
the ephemerality (per Meher) of existence!
At
times a river, a quagmire, a ruse, a nightmare,
far
removed from the Real Existence.
Yet
in our prayers we do not plead for God
to
awaken us from the dream,
but
to make it a better dream,
one
nearer to our fancy, more suitable to our nature –
this
dream ever-shifting, ever drifting downstream,
as
we follow in its wake, no wheel or rudder
in
our grasp and we lose our faith
or
find it eviscerated; abandoning God
for
the dream itself, blaming Him
for
not answering our prayers
when
it is the dream that fails us.
Our
one escape from this ages-old spell
is
to allow the Awakener
to
rouse us from our slumber,
free
us from illusion,
to
establish in us the Reality of God’s love
for
however long forever turns out to be.
O
child of God, gently, gently wend your way
downstream until your
reach Holy ground.
My
fix
Sorting
through the gathered letters
of
my elder years, near the frayed
end
of my rope. Words are my fix.
Death
of self, recommends my Lord.
Family
and friends gathered around, yes!
Until
then, faith is my fix. It will be ‘til
the end.
(Got
to have my fix.)
Abandon
all hope, He said,
ye
who enter here. (Poetry is the balm;
Faith
is my fix.) Helpless and hopeless
before
my Lord. Humility can’t be faked.
(Poetry
is the balm. Words are my fix.)
Sincerity
is the ticket. Got to have my fix.
O
various comrades! Words are my fix.
Faith
is my fix. Until I am safely beyond
all
need for solace. Got to have my fix.
O
child of God, how fortunate you are,
surrounded by heralding
angels in your latter days.
The
Great Enigma
Comparisons
are odious,
say
the Zen Buddhists.
Everything
you say about God,
insisted
Eckhart, is untrue.
God
alone is real, declared Meher Baba.
God’s
aloneness makes Him incomparable.
To
evaluate God is to judge Him
through
illusory perceptions,
depict
Him through illusory descriptions,
His
attributes a list of everything we are not,
telling
us little about Him
and
everything about us.
O
child, my child, God exists as the Great Enigma,
incomparable in His
Oneness.
The
One without a second
In
the beginningless beginning
(before
the dawn of time),
God
woke up, an apparently disoriented newborn,
wondering
for a few timeless moments Who He was;
felt
a whim for exploration, then for light and vision,
creating
the stars and sun to reveal and reflect His glory;
followed
up with a whim to create an other, a witness
to
His glory and began the evolutionary chain
and
there came along numberless others
to
imagine Him, fear and love Him,
worship
or ignore Him, call upon Him
by
a host of names and images
and
to come to know intuitively
that
their separation from Him is illusory
and
that in some timeless future they will come
to
know Him entirely, first as the Beloved
and
then as their very own Self – the Only One,
the
Ancient One, the One without a second.
O
child of God, your connection to Meher
began before the
beginningless beginning.
Ardent
inarticulacy
My
Lord is the ancient, unspoken Word.
I
am infatuated with the common tongue.
All
poems are a description of this earthly realm.
This
realm is naught but a description of Reality.
Meher
Baba is the Truth.
That’s
why He stopped speaking.
Each
night I curl up with my dictionary,
thumb
through its assorted
definitions
and descriptions,
delve
into my trusty thesaurus;
quietly
roam the contours of my extensive vocabulary.
Words
on paper. Words on the screen.
How
can I not be infatuated with words?
They
are the nearest thing I have to His silence
and
I only become silent myself when His Truth
brushes
up against me and I am robbed of speech.
O
child of God, how loquacious you have become
in
your ardent inarticulacy.
(painting
by Joe DiSabatino)
Another
fine mess
Words
never contain the truth –
it
pours right through them
splattering
onto the immaculate page.
But
I am not yet comfortable with silence
which
feels too much like
the
loneliness leading up to death.
You
were silent in Your Onlyness.
I
have only words to offer.
You
were silent in Your Wholeness.
I
am not silent because I am not whole,
habitually
voicing my words
of
praise and complaint
for
yet another fine mess
You
seem to have gotten us into.
O
child of God, another collection of words from you.
When
will you be struck dumb by your own presumption?
(drawing
by Rich Panico)
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