The Brave Pedestrian

May 27, 2006: I have arrived at my worldview after about twenty-two years of seeking, and quite a few visions and experiences of different sorts. I’m 40 years old, by the way. I have become convinced of one thing: Sleep is the same thing as death. Our lives are on twin tracks – the track of sleep/death, and the one that our conscious mind inhabits when we are awake. When alive, our conscious mind has a daily biological need to take a dip in the sea of our permanence. If we deprive ourselves of this need, it becomes so compelling that we may doze off even at the steering wheel, and become a danger to our lives! But after we have slept our fill, our conscious mind feels the urge to re-emerge into the “outside” world in which we live and work. This sort of straddling the twin tracks, or swinging of the pendulum, consitutes our lives. Our lives also have a bigger swinging of this pendulum. After we have been “in this world” for a sufficiently long time, we submit to the urge to r...

Somewhere someone is making love – Maybe bird maybe beast or man Somewhere a child is being conceived And I am that child. So I have a date to keep For that I’ll have to die, again. Somewhere a mother is heavy with child – Maybe beast maybe ape or woman She’s my mother, I’ll suckle at her breast And if I don’t go now, if I stay on here My mother will hold a stillborn child  To her breast and grieve and wail And so I have a date to keep So I must die, again. And elsewhere a child is born – Who some years hence will seek my love I must not keep my lover waiting Or she’ll pass her days in barren need. Oh yes I have a date to keep So I must die, again. And my lover and I must then conceive Our children waiting to be born My unborn children call to me The mother of my children calls to me They all will die so that we can meet And so my loved ones, I must go. My mother, lover, children, friends  In an unborn future form...

Morning walk. A big white stray I’ve never met before Abruptly puts his paws on my chest. No wagging tail, No lolling tongue, No panting, No doggy grin, No wet-nosed kisses. Strange grey eyes Gaze into mine. “We know each other,” they say. Standing there, I stroke that big head for a minute, Acknowledging a deep bond. I never see him again And I don’t need to. But I understand that No matter where I go, No matter who I am, My friends and I Shall Always Find each other. Thank you, Old friend, For reminding me So beautifully. ________________________________ I first wrote this in January 2007. Is it a poem? You decide. This is an accurate account of an incident that actually happened to me on a morning walk, and the thoughts that flashed through my head then.

…was pressing the blunt heavy chopper to his throat unnecessarily hard, grinding it into adam’s apple. “Die, you filthy monk! You lying dirty bastard! You betrayed the trust with which I sent my wife to prostrate before you… swine! Now you die!” he was screaming into his ear. Guru Vaastava wished his disciples would learn to express even anger in a gentle whisper. A trickle of blood soaked the saffron cloth on his chest. His mind was numb from the sudden attack of this obedient disciple, Ramana, in the dead of night. Oh yes, he remembered Ramana’s wife… how could he not remember those perfectly-formed white thighs? How could he forget the look of surprised pleasure in her eyes? He remembered how he had bid her to lie on her back in the prayer room, in front of the black stone linga that she had so lovingly rubbed with sandalwood. Under the stony gaze of the hooded serpent, he had gently caressed her toes and feet as she lay whimpering in passion… caressed her calf-muscles with a c...

Forgive me, Lord, this broken drum speaks In a unworthy voice — now true, now untrue. Sift truth from the lies if truth there is, Else spill me in the dust. My quest is the quest of a one-eyed man Whose vision oft deceives him; He depends on his poor eye not because he trusts it, But because people who offered to lead and show him the way Did not earn his trust. Dimly-remembered voices from a past So distant that it is doubtful Whether it existed at all Echo in my skull Half-voices, half-noises… Disturbances in a cave of unknown depth. With the tips of my mind I seek out the cracks Between wakefulness and sleep Where I hear these voices loudest, And glimpse faces that I recognize – Faces not of those living Nor of the dead I know. Fleetingly with forceful gestures they speak. Seeking to grasp their words, I awaken Only to find my awakening empty Bereft of the meaning of what I saw and heard. Something I knew and trusted was lost And so I grope a...