Tennyson. To yield or not to yield

Tennyson says famously: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"

And of course its true.

And how should it be interpreted?
I would think it applied to not yielding to discouragement, fear, temptation, to time, despair, disappointment, old age and more.

But not yield? To be unyielding? To be firm? That I cannot see as a positive attribute. Of course man must yield to chances, to opportunities. To life itself!

When seen against earlier lines in this very same poem it poses a contradiction.

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little..."

And then yet again later Tennyson says 'Come, my friends, "Tis not too late to seek a newer world."

Therein is the contradiction in my opinion. How can one move forward, make new discoveries, indeed shine and be burnished if one did not dare to yield? The being able to yield, to be able to put aside ones thoughts, fears, 'shoulds' and 'should nots' and melt into the moment, become the moment, go with the impulse- that is the real challenge. Only then is movement and true change possible, true transformation and true participation. Only then can one say

"I am a part of all that I have met"

Shadows then

Everything there is to know in this world is inside of us.

Listen, and when you hear, listen again. Maybe deeper, maybe not.

See and when seeing, see again. Not to see more but to see better. Not deeper but clearer; without shadows. For one such glimpse ...!
Does one get better at going deeper or does the deeper only become more accessible?

Shadows then. Clouding what is real, true, pure, urgent. The Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva wrote: 'It may be that a better way/To conquer time and the world/Is to pass, and not to leave a shadow/ on the walls...'.

Shadows then. Ghosts that live in our minds, on our minds. To survive them is the battle. Love and separation from ones own children is not worse than separation from ones own self.

Shadows then. How best to escape their influence? One needs a semblance of a locked room where silence becomes inevitable. Everyday conversation falls away, its superfluity and redundancy revealed. Over time one loses the ability to speak cleverly, to express oneself in well rehearsed ways even platitudes. This falling away of articulation is a gift. It leaves only emptiness and the deep nothingness that is full.

Reality-Fiction-Reality

This quote by Marco Tempest the magician and illusionist:
We willingly enter fictional worlds where we cheer our heroes and cry for friends we never had.” sums up the passion of Indians for films doesn't it? Jai and Veeru of Sholay are as real to us as our friends. Maybe Veeru still lives somewhere in Rampur with Basanti? Surely there must be a memorial dedicated to Bhuvan in Champaner? Kabir Khan of Chak de India and Silk Smitha of Dirty Picture are better known then their real-life counterparts.

Do we Indians cheer and cry more for our fictional heroes than our real life ones?

Elegy for a Home

Out of its doors and windows, corners, pores
The House constricts itself expelling me out

Left only in the houseplants
slowly dying,
the stubborn parts
of the gently fading upholstery,
the dog chewed cushions not yet replaced
by blue sequined ones,
bookmarked, lined books
not yet lent out and forgotten

The tart green scent of crushed lemon leaves
is the green in the veins of the living room floor.
Marble, like the pebbled bed of a forgotten secret forest stream
dusty from our arrivals every evening.

Only the moon still picks out the silver leaves
As they flutter whimsically to the forgotten spaces
The lipsticked tea cup, the ashtray,
the half read book
that still lies upon its waiting page

The white damask sheet with delicate paisleys
and the far left frayed corner.
The gradually fading spot
fading with careless casual washing
That one is me.

27.10.11

SOMETIMES IN BITTERNESS

Get out of my life, Man
Walk out of my door
Here, take your burden of ‘manly’ concerns with you
Also guilt
Out of my door, out of the gate
Watch it! Don’t trip over haste that trails close behind.
Take your obligatory hand away from my shoulder
Preoccupation makes it sit heavy
It weighs a ton
Makes breathing difficult (I stifle a scream of exasperation)

Let the winds fly away with your words
Nonchalant, they don’t reach the place it hurts anyway.
Don’t bother phrasing carefully
your facile reassurance
Hear it ring hollow when most needed?

Don’t try and hide the glance that slips away
To your cellphone, the TV screen, the waiter that hovers, the people who happen to cross your line of vision
Because you couldn’t see the pain in my eyes even if you looked into them
Go away, Man
Take your ‘love’ with you
It does not ring true

Walk out of my door.
Out the gate
Go.

Hmmm

I want to write but can't. I have no words, thoughts fail me. In the cage of my mind there is no opening for them. Everything reverberates inside, reflecting in the small space and bouncing off the inside upon itself till it becomes a dark, murky, swampy, floaty, mushy, soft, hard, dark, full of holes, cheesy, mouldy, rodenty, ferrety, quicksilvery, shiny, glittery, darkly forbidding .......mess

Plastic time

I asked, wished, for a revelation in the midst of one
How did the day come to have so many more hours than usual?
Time stretched while we meditated
Joining and harmonizing, breathing in unison
Alive
Every moment, every movement, in tandem with the universe.

But for you there will be no crying
Though the sun still glints off the sea that moves at the horizon from the terrace
Though the breeze still blows at the railing where we stood together,
and the gentle day still streams in at the door pooling at the chair on the rug where you had a nap in the afternoon

I ask Oh Devi, that you grant me perpetual bliss where there is no transience, no temporariness
Perpetual because I can feel this bliss within myself, call it up by myself
No longing, no missing, no emptiness created by the absence of another.
Grant that I feel the ecstasy in every moment of my life through your grace.
Grant me more...freedom from sadness and emptiness.
And I surrender it all to you.

fading

However deep our experience, however firm we think the moment is imprisoned inside of our soul, however magical the encounter...it fades. And the first memory that fades is the fragrance of the flowers that enveloped the moment.

When and why does it come to this , that one has so little to say? Is it a sign of deepening thought or the opposite?

Kabir

Just like that..without any reason..because my heart yearns for his words and because this is one of my favorites


WITHIN this earthen vessel are bowers and groves,
and within it is the Creator:
Within this vessel are the seven oceans
and the unnumbered stars.
The touchstone and the jewel-appraiser are within;
and within this vessel the Eternal soundeth,
and the spring wells up.
Kabîr says:
"Listen to me, my Friend!
My beloved Lord is within."

Do I care

Do I care if I never become a success?
I care if I fail, because that means I have not applied myself enough
Do I care if I never create anything bigger than myself?
Do I care if people dont know who I am , or dont care about knowing me?
Do I care if I never have enough, clever or memorable to say?
Do I care if no one comes to my funeral?

Have to do what the moment reveals needs to be done

Nothing shows itself clearly at the moment. Life is full of haze and shadows and things that can be or may be. The road covers itself, the goal hidden from my view.
How do I walk this path? To where do I walk this path? For what purpose, to what end, to what reward? What must I feel, think, desire? Nothing is known.
I come to another conclusion now, learned in a murky clarity of elusive thought: I have to walk in this moment the best I can. That is all. Every step taken with honesty and without pushing towards any other end except that (to act with honesty). This will not take me to my goal but may be in fact the only goal.

It is surprising to think this because we are so used to thinking about the end result of what we do. Always thinking what or where our actions will lead us to. Giving up this expectation is difficult because it takes away perspective and expectation and to some extent even hope for a wonderful end.

calling out

Lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost lost......Oh Devi find me, hold my hand and guide me on my journey............

Kabir calling to evolve consciously

Having crossed the river,
where will you go, O friend ?

There’s no road to tread,
No traveler ahead,
Neither a beginning, nor an end.

There’s no water, no boat, no boatman, no cord;
No earth is there, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford.

You have forgotten the Self within,
Your search in the void will be in vain;
In a moment the life will ebb
And in this body you won’t remain.

Be ever conscious of this, O friend,
You’ve to immerse within your Self;
Kabir says, salvation you won’t then need,
For what you are, you would be indeed.

Silence* By Pico Iyer

Beautiful essay.

Every one of us knows the sensation of going up, on retreat, to a high
place, and feeling ourselves so lifted up that we can hardly imagine the
circumstances of our usual lives, or all the things that make us fret. In
such a place, in such a state, we start to recite the standard litany: that
silence is sunshine, where company is clouds; that silence is rapture, where
company is doubt; that silence is golden, where company is brass.

But silence is not so easily won. And before we race off to go prospecting
in those hills, we might usefully recall that fool's gold is much more
common, and that gold has to be panned for, dug out from other substances.
"All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by
Silence," wrote Herman Melville, one of the loftiest and most eloquent of
souls.

We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but
a presence; not emptiness but repletion. Silence is something more than just
a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is
stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear
ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear
ourselves not think, and so sink below our selves into a place far deeper
than mere thought allows. In silence, we might better say, we can hear
someone else think.

Or simply breathe. For silence is responsiveness, and in silence we can
listen to something behind the clamour of the world.

A "moment of silence" is the highest honour we can pay someone; it is the
point at which the mind stops, and something else takes over (words run out
when feelings rush in).

There is -- of course -- a place for noise, as there is for daily lives.
There is a place for roaring, for the shouting exultation of a baseball
game, for hymns and cries of pleasure. The great charm of noise, however, is
when it ceases.

Silence, then, could be said to be the ultimate province of trust: it is the
place where we trust ourselves to be alone; where we trust others to
understand the things we do not say; where we trust a higher harmony to
assert itself. We all know how treacherous are words, and how often we use
them to paper over embarrassment, or emptiness, or fear of the larger spaces
that silence brings. "Words, words, words" commit us to positions we do not
really hold, the imperatives of chatter; words are what we use for lies,
false promises, and gossip. We babble with strangers; with intimates we can
be silent. We "make conversation" when we are at a loss; we unmake it when
we are alone, or with those so close to us that we can afford to be alone
with them.
In love, we are speechless; in awe, we say, words fail us.

(1992)

*From Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions*
* *