Some time back when I was talking to Gulpa, describing in a word, his/our state of mind these days, he called it profoundly "disbelief". Stretching this further, I began to feel that it was the fear of "unknown" which was a major contributor to even this disbelief, and coming in the way of experiencing "happiness". Remove "fear" from your psyche, and lo behold, you can have only "bliss", was the chain of my thoughts. This thought process, brought me then to my oft repeated theme; one should have "grace", and fear would melt away, and there will be only happiness. To my mind therefore there are these 3 steps to get there.
1. You run after happiness and the more you seek it, the more it eludes you.
2. You seek unhappiness a la "kunti" of mahabharatha style, so that you think of Him all the time and feel that you are happy.
3. You surrender to Him, and with His Grace on you, rid of fear, there is this realisation, that the so called unhappiness is also another form of happiness. In other words there is no such thing as "unhappiness", There is only all pervasive "anandam".
It was this mood, which prompted a poetry titled "happiness and fear". This goes like this :-
" Are you Zukhov asks the midnight knocking cop,
No, he is the man next door says this sleeping chap,
and goes back to sleep in that dead of night,
with absolute peace and happiness in sight.
Not having done the homework of his teacher,
unable faking, to miss the bus, and full of fear,
finding the teacher having taken a day's leave,
the boy suddenly finds bliss, in a perfect heave.
With inadequate preparations for the annual test,
and hopeless of doing anything close to the best,
but finding just the questions that were prepared,
one is in an ecstacy of getting finally delivered.
On a more rational introspection,
on what is happiness kinda reflection,
one sees, that disapperance of fear and anxiety,
is the only eternal truth of happiness and ecstacy.
What then is this fear, being the inevitable question,
I ask, is it a mere expectation of unpleasant emotion?
No, methinks, it's just an impediment to one's realisation,
supremely willed by Him, in His scheme of dispensation.
Why then do I hanker for this ephemeral happiness,
and instead seek His Grace for "no fear" kinda wisdom,
to be in readiness always, to enter His great kingdom,
where there is only eternal peace love and bliss.
With this earnest longing, will He now start listening,
and spare me His oft repeated moods of testing,
Pause and stop to enjoy every bit of my failure,
and with His Grace rid me of my dread of future?"
Hope you like it folks.
Love
Vichu
Now that the blog has gone public, for alomst 3 to 4 weeks now, the comments to your poetry may get critical :-)
ReplyDelete1. One of the objectives of poetry is to make a statement.
2. Obviously, to make it pithy(I hope the usage is proper)
The good news first, your determination is admirable, so it the persistence of your emotions. All your poems reflect the same emotion, the feeling and the same fervour.
Now the criticism, consistency in the long run is not very apetising, especially in poetry.
On the two objectives i wrote at the beginning , the second is where you score well because your theme is by now quite known.
But where is your statement of experience?
Do you want us to read your poetry the way you would respond (in words only, surely not in actions and I have been a witness to that!) to advises on preparation for the DEMING AWARD!
Well if yes, then consistency of emotion is the way to go.
If no, then to hell with the quality gurus, variety is indeed the spice of life and your poetry should reflect that.
I saw your mail and would tell you that we do read your work but comment we don't always.
Those we love the most are the ones we are most afraid to offend.
And criticism is the art of offending with love.
Naresh's critique gives me another opportunity to "look inward" and continue my "khoj/quest/jignyaasaa to try and understand His purpose of my creation as "vichu".( This is without prejuduce to the great rational thought that creation of "vichu" is a result of my own karma in previous births).
ReplyDeleteNaresh asks "what is my statement of experience". I thought the preamble to this poem spells it out clearly. Since this seems to be not so obvious, let me attempt to define it;
All my earlier pieces, were more like outpourings of my angst, first flippantly, and taking a more serious tenor in later ones, about what I perceived as His scheme of things. There was some element of empathy from others.
More recently, doubts have cropped in; not about His scheme, but my own credibility, to come out successfully in many of the so called "tests". Gulpa used a word "disbelief", which is another form of "doubt".
Doubt about what? While I was flattering myself that when I was truly tryng to take the path of "detachment" and seeing that He is in no mood to acknowledge, my angst expressed in a "flippant" style was poignant, and very appealing.
But then somewhere there is this realisation, that given a proper test, I can fail miserably, making my outbursts seem very very unjustified. So then comes this humble opinion about myself - I have no legitimate reason to be flippant-, there is no way that I can imagine or arrogate myself to imagine that I am pertinent enough to debate His scheme of things, except to pray and tell Him, that I am incompetent to be "tested" and I need only His Grace, for redemption.
So from flippant, questioning mood, there is this change of theme of saranagathy mode of prayer, which is reflected in this latest poem.
As to the suggestion of variety ( spice of life?) I will fnd it diffcult; I like "saathvic" food, and modern day noodles, pizzas, sometime are capable of stopping the formation of saliva. So long as my "khoj" of myself is in progress, the theme will remain same, I am afraid.
We can have different varieties of sambhar, rasam etc, similarly my poems will take on different hues, with the theme being "my purpose" and "His scheme".
Love
Vichu