The blue eyed son

“What happened to Katzie? Where did he go?”
Soen-sa said, “Where do you come from?”
“From my mother’s belly.”
“Where does your mother come from?” Gita was silent.
Soen-sa said, “Everything in the world comes from the same one thing. It is like in a cookie factory. Many different kinds of cookies are made — lions, tigers, elephants, houses, people. They all have different shapes and different names, but they are all made from the same dough and they all taste the same. So all the different things that you see - a cat, a person, a tree, the sun, this floor - all these things are really the same.”
“What are they?”
“People give them many different names. But in themselves, they have no names. When you are thinking, all things have different names and different shapes. But when you are not thinking, all things are the same. There are no words for them. People make the words. A cat doesn’t say, ‘I am a cat.’ People say, ‘This is a cat.’ The sun doesn’t say, ‘My name is sun.’ People say, ‘This is the sun.’
So when someone asks you, ‘What is this?’, how should you answer?”
“I shouldn’t use words.”
Soen-sa said, “Very good! You shouldn’t use words. So if someone asks you, ‘What is Buddha?’, what would be a good answer?”
Gita was silent.
Soen-sa said, “Now you ask me.”
“What is Buddha?”
Soen-sa hit the floor.
Gita laughed.
Soen-sa said, “Now I ask you: What is Buddha?”
Gita hit the floor.
“What is God?”
Gita hit the floor.
“What is your mother?”
Gita hit the floor.
“What are you?”
Gita hit the floor.
“Very good! This is what all things in the world are made of. You and Buddha and God and your mother and the whole world are the same.”
Gita smiled.
Soen-sa said, “Do you have any more questions?”
“You still haven’t told me where Katz went.”
Soen-sa leaned over, looked into her eyes, and said, “You already understand.”
Gita said, “Oh!” and hit the floor very hard. Then she laughed.
Soen-sa ends the anecdote with an exchange intended to be funny, but in fact a tragic testament to contemporary Western education being a force of industrialized specialization, deliberately fragmenting the unity of all things and de-conditioning our inner wholeness:
As she was opening the door, she turned to Soen-sa and said, “But I’m not going to answer that way when I’m in school. I’m going to give regular answers!” Soen-sa laughed.

Poems are our honesty that we can sing. 

Poetry, or for that case all forms of creation, are one of the ways, human meets the superhuman.

They are not written. 

They happen. 

Just like a childbirth, there is a moment of singularity when you conceive a verse. 

Then you nurture it in your soul.

It grows with you, and then one day it takes a form… written or spoken. 

Once it has a form, it is free and so are you. 

It is painful. 

Like all forms of creation, it begins with a chaos and ends in light. 

Just like a childbirth. 

This is why in the Hindustani tehzeeb of Shayari, the poets plead you to listen to them by saying “Arz kiya hai”.

That is all that a poet really wants. 

To be heard.

Nothing makes one a poet. 

Just like clouds have rain, everyone has a poem, waiting to precipitate. 

But it is elusive...

Finding that poem, is finding rain in the cloud. No one can.

We have to become the poem. 

There is either rain or the cloud. 

It needs an ascension, for the clouds to become water and poets to become poems. 

A jolt, a thrust, a toss into the open skies.

It is in those ramblings, we meet our song.

Some of us have the words to express them and some have none. 

But all of us are poets nonetheless. 

Poems are My honesty that You can sing. 

सुबह जागी, हड़बड़ाती,
हर रोज की तरह
जाने की जल्दी
बस पकड़ने की जल्दी
अधूरी नींद का शोर
सपनो को पूरा करने की होड़.
हर रोज सा दिन था
न नया, न पुराना .

भागती मैं,
जो बैठी बस में
पीछे सीट पर सिर टिका
खिड़की से लगी कुछ ताकने
लगी सोचने-
बीते रात की बातें
जिन पर गौर नहीं फरमाया
ज़रूरी थी
पर कल वक़्त हाथ नहीं आया

हेड फ़ोन मेरे कानो में
पुराने गाने बज रहे रास्ते के पेड़
कहीं पीछे भाग रहे
बादल उपर से
मुझे ताक रहे

रुकी बस,
मैं जागी
सड़क रुका था,
जाम लगा था
सुना कोई हादसा हुआ था
खून के छींटे भी थे
लोगों ने बताया-
कोई मर गया...
एक छोटा सा स्कूटर
बड़े ट्रक की टक्कर से
फिसल गया

जो उचक के देखा
तो पास में फैली थी सब्ज़ी
और पड़ा था
एक झोला ...
घर पर कुछ अच्छा बनना था
या हर रोज वो जाता था
इसी रास्ते
पुराने से झोले में
ताज़ी सब्ज़ी लिए
यकायक उसका आँगन दिखा
लाल साड़ी वाली बीबी,
कूदता फांदता बच्चा,
...और ऐनक वाली माँ

भूली सी कोई याद
दस्तक देती रही
मैं भी अनसुना कर
बाहर तकती रही
रुकी बस चलने लगी
सब्जी का झोला छूटता रहा
मुझे वो दूर तक देखता रहा
चुप चाप पड़ा पुकारता रहा

तभी टूटी चुप्पी
ज़िंदगी कहाँ रुकती है
रास्ते नहीं रुकते
किसी ने जो यह कहा
मैंने हामी भरी
सिर हिलाया और मुस्कुरा दिया

अगली सुबह;
हर रोज सा दिन था
न नया न पुराना...
फिर जल्दी में बस पकड़ी
वही खिड़की
वही भागते पेड़
बादल थोड़े अलग थे
जो उपर से ताकते थे
ड्राइवर ने ब्रेक लगाई थी
सामने दुल्हन की विदाई थी
कल जो लाल रंग रास्ते पे बिखरा था
आज दुल्हन के गालों पे बिखर गया
बारात संग,
लोग झूमते रहे
मैं फिर मुस्काई
कल वाली बात याद आयी
'ज़िंदगी कहाँ रुकती है
रास्ता नहीं रुकता'

मैने वो झोला ढूँढा,
जो कल मुझे था बुला रहा
वो मगर मिला नहीं
हेडफोन में गाने बजते रहे
बस यूँ ही चलती रही
...ज़िन्दगी भी

I want to run away, (she said)

From the idea of 'we'

From everything

From you and me...

 This existence 

Or lack of it

This endless tumult

The burden of wish

This rowing and rowing

to a nether shore

I somehow end up 

back to before

I want to run away, 

From you and me

Yes, sweetheart, 

You are nothing but true

But we have to row

on seismic waves, 

Together perhaps,

separated may be.

Sometimes we surf

Sometimes we sink

But row we must

Row to be free

Those who run

must run to survive

But as with the sheep

or deer or fish,

For those who run

there must be a herd

a flock; my dear

we chose to miss

So we have to be

In the melee

Making the wagers

losing to win

Painting our faces

Chanting the rhymes

Muting our voices

playing their mimes.

Bowing our heads

to absurd adage

We must embrace

this camouflage

But we have to be

In the melee

Together perhaps,

separated may be

But row we must

Row to be free

But row we must

Row to be free