no universe dancing
no gods appearing
no fantasy
of this side
carried to the other
just an acceptance
of all existence
everything
just a musical note
in a symphony
of absolute stillness
shekhar
no universe dancing
no gods appearing
no fantasy
of this side
carried to the other
just an acceptance
of all existence
everything
just a musical note
in a symphony
of absolute stillness
shekhar
Those are very beautiful words indeed, Shekhar. It reminded me of a great quote by the great Sufi poet Rumi.
“Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.”
The symphony of absolute stillness is the beauty of being in complete peace with ourselves and to be AWAKE. There is this quote that I keep in front of me in my home office, and read everyday.
“A very few people are awake. They live in a state of constant total amazement.”
Thanks for those calming words – a great way to start the week.
Himanshu – New York City
I am not curious about the otherside.
Even if GOD exists this side…. People are disghusting…. They will think him human like…
A man had fallen from a hill and catched a branch… for life…. as he feared death…. prayed to God (god) … please save me….may be he was sincere that moment!!! An anology if you are comfertable…..
Heard a voice… I am God… to help you…
He said yes GOD help me I dont want to die…
God said have you heard my voice before…. He said no… but now I truly belive there is GOD…. Its miracle…
Lets save me god.
God said ok then leave the branch…..
What you think that man must have done???
Well it depends..
Think out loud…. see if you in position of that person what will you do…. if you ready with your true answer…
you will soon hear something ……
before that just sing your own poem and enjoy….
Is there a purpose to this mindless going around in circles?
Not just me – the world spinning on its axis for years and years
with no end in sight
Is there a point to it?
Is something supposed to happen at the end of it?
Through the middle of it?
Are we all waiting for something?
Is anything at all going to change if it stops turning?
Centuries pass, species come and go
Life forms evolve and reach extinction
Big deal
Earthquakes and tidal waves
Are just shrugs in time anyway
Does any of it really matter?
Is god just an invention
We need to justify
The pointlessness of it all?
We’d look pretty stupid huh…
All these life lessons we keep teaching ourselves
And no higher power at the end of it
Respected Shekhar ji,
There is always a conflict- Being and Non-being.
The most immediate impression man has about his existence is that it is there as a subject of experience, a canvas of sensations, perceptions, ideas, meanings, feelings, desires, mental fluctuations, judgments, etc. As a matter of fact, if there is any problem, the most primordial problem of all it is that human subjectivity or we can say it ego, It is basically a kind of double consciousness, the consciousness of its being present in the world and that of its being present to itself. The fact of presence of ourselves as subjects in the world and of ourselves to ourselves, is the greatest mystery about our humanness. Now the question is whether we are present in the world rather than not being there at all. Whether we are present to ourselves as world experiencers rather than being simply there as perhaps animals are. As egos or subjectivities, whether we are both empirical and open consciousness.
The phenomenal horizon of subjectivity and the transcendental horizon are the orders of consciousness. The first one being immersed in the data derived from the environment i.e. the world and the people and in the epistemic modes through which the data are derived and the second one is a sort of standing spectator uninvolved in anything that constitutes these data. Thus, phenomenal horizon of subjectivity is world based and as such denotes our ego consciousness but transcendental horizon is the ‘inner man’ the unfathomable ‘nothing’ over which the ‘I’ sense floats.
Most of us in our ordinary, everyday life operate as phenomenal horizon of subjectivity. This is our routine, in the world existence such as assumptive, categorical, logical, grammatical, contextual, linguistic etc. It is along this existence that thinking, calculating, understanding, decision making, comparing and numerous other intellectual processes take place. Even in introspection and self analysis it is phenomenal horizon of subjectivity that doubts, interrogates, shuffles and reshuffles its position as an introspector, plays the language games, robes and unrobes meaning inside and outside linguistic expressions. Phenomenal horizon of subjectivity thus is the cogitating subject that we at any given moment during our wakeful life find ourselves to be.
Phenomenal horizon of subjectivity is outside Transcendental horizon whose main characteristic is open awareness. Transcendental horizon presents itself as a pure reflection, as a field against which Phenomenal horizon of subjectivity appears as a figure. Phenomenal horizon of subjectivity is double edged in the sense that it has a background thinning itself into a nothing and a foreground receptive to and delimited by the reality of the physical world. However, what is enigmatic as regards its very act of being in the world is that it is never without a Feeling that its background extends into an elusive transcendental horizon.
The expressions atman, purusa, Sunya, Existenz, Being, Pure Ego, speak an awareness that transcends Phenomenal horizon of subjectivity. The most direct expression of transcendental horizon is its role of witnessing Phenomenal horizon of subjectivity. To transcendental horizon, Phenomenal horizon of subjectivity is present, active and engaged in situations and worldly affairs. But transcendental horizon can not encompass itself, since it is an expanse where most primal meaning-forms seem to telescope into a serene mass of essences, universals, memory and above all, into the unique abyss of trans-mental nothing. If we become introspective and direct our mind on to the fringe of Phenomenal horizon of subjectivity we realize that here the awareness of presence slowly fades out into a background of esoteric and undecipherable absence, i.e., sheer quality less Non-being.
A.K. Bhattacharyya
Directorate of Advertising and visual Publicity
New Delhi-110003
On the Other Side – Pleasures of Poetry
__________________________________________________
Dear Shekhar,
I’d like to post some poetry here, other’s and mine. I liked the title of one of your poems, and I think it’ll form a suitable title for the poetry collection.
1
A FRIEND
Hey! With the clay you dug out
I fashioned a Buddha.
The Buddha turned back into clay.
It rained.
Clear skies after rain are pointless.
-Ko Un
The original poem in Korean translated by Kim Young and Brother Anthony.
————————————————–
2
A MOONLESS NIGHT
No moon up
yet the two hundred miles
between you and me
shine bright all night long.
That dog that will die tomorrow
doesn’t know it’s going to die.
It’s barking fiercely.
-Ko Un
The original poem in Korean translated by Kim Young and Brother Anthony.
Note: Shekhar, could you please give me the editing privileges for the ‘Pleasures of Poetry’.
3
KIND
I hadn’t noticed
till a death took me outside
and left me there
that grass lifts so quietly
and catches everything
we drop and we drop
everything.
~Leonard Nathan
4
A Moment
Across the highway a heron stands
in the flooded field. It stands
as if lost in thought, on one leg, careless,
as if the field belongs to herons.
The air is clear and quiet.
Snow melts on this second fair day.
Mother and daughter,
we sit in the parking lot
with doughnuts and coffee.
We are silent.
For a moment the wall between us
opens to the universe;
then closes.
And you go on saying
you do not want to repeat my life.
-Ruth Stone
5
Ah! immense space – Giuseppe Ungaretti in translation
M’illumino
D’immenso
~Giuseppe Ungaretti
****
Ah! immense space
My soul uplifted
Shines
-tr. Ravi Kopra
6
A haiku of Basho
Storm on Mount Asama
Wind blowing
Out of the stones.
-Basho
7
Do You Want A Chicken Sandwich
the moment my mother opened the door
to the living room and saw me on the knees
with my cock in my hand jerking off
in front of the television set with a hot magazine by my side
and she gasped and quickly shut the door
but she did finish what she started to say
when she first pushed it open which was
do you want a chicken sandwich
Okay I said probably to the door and put my cock in my pants
and went and ate my chicken sandwich
while in the next room through all of this excitement
my father was playing the violin always the same old song
-Norman Stock
8
Sometime
Sometime when I
begin to think
I forget what I
was going to think
and start thinking
some other thing –
like how many legs
the spiders have,
how many move
at one time.
and when the left
forward move forward
do the right rear
ones follow suit.
it seems all absurd.
but what the heck,
thinking is thinking
after all and I have
the right to think
what I want to think
any time.
-Ravi Kopra
9
Seven Haiku
The old pond
A frog jumps in –
The sound of the water
-Basho
*****
The old pond
A straw sandal floating
Sleet falling
-Buson
******
The old pond
A lonely heron standing
Fish under water watching
-Ravi Kopra
******
Fleas feast on my head
The horse pisses
By my pillow
-Basho
*******
Winter storm –
Snow, blackout
She in my bed, so warm
-Ravi Kopra
*******
A muddle of mice
Their shit looks like caraway
but smells like allspice
-Paul Muldoon
******
Jean stoops to the tap
set into a maple’s groin
for the rising sap
-Paul Muldoon
(double meaning in the last haiku?)
10
Lovesong
He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains
Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His word were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assasin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon’s gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop
In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage
In the morning they wore each other’s face
-Ted Hughes
Day – An Erotic Portuguese poem of Adelia Prado in translation
Dia
As galinhas com susto abrem o bico
e param daquele jeito imóvel
– ia dizer imoral –
as barbelas e as cristas envermelhadas,
só as artérias palpitando no pescoço.
Uma mulher espantada com sexo:
mas gostando muito.
-Adelia Prado
****
Day
The chickens open their beaks in fear
and stop, they’ve the way of not moving
– immortal, I was going to say –
the wattles and crests all red,
only the arteries in their necks quivering.
A woman startled by sex,
but loving it much.
-tr. Ravi Kopra
12
No help for that
There is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
a space
and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest
times
we will know it
we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and we will wait
and wait
in that
space
-Charles Bukowski
13
Sexism
The happiest moment in a woman’s life
Is when she hears the turn of her lover’s key
In the lock, and pretends to be asleep
When he enters the room, trying to be
Quiet but clumsy, bumping into things,
And she can smell the liquor on his breath
But forgives him because she has him back
And doesn’t have to sleep alone.
The happiest moment in a man’s life
Is when he climbs out of bed
With a woman, after an hour’s sleep,
After making love, and pulls on
His trousers, and walks outside,
And pees in the bushes, and sees
The high August sky full of stars
And gets in his car and drives home.
-David Lehman
14
After great pain a formal feeling comes – Emily Dickinson in Urdu translation
After great pain a formal feeling comes –
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions – was it He that bore?
And yesterday – or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow –
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
————————————————–
kisi baRay gum k baad
ek saada si mehyoosi aati hai
aisa lagata hai jaisay
ehasas pur takalluf kabar ban gayay hon
dukhi dil poochta hai –
kya jesus nay dukh nahin saha?
kal ya sadiion pehlay?
paon apnay aap hi
kisi takhti k rastay par chaltay hain
zameen pe, hawaa main
jahan bhi chalna chaahain
kisi ki parwah nahin kartay
jaisay gaar ho sukuun main
yeh waqat guzar kar bhi nahin guzarta
hamesha yaad aata hai zindgi main
jaisay sardi main paray log
baraf ko yaad kartay hain –
pehlay thund, phir nasha sa
aur phir be parwah.
-tr. Ravi Kopra
Hola, encontre tu sitio hace unos dias en bing y me parecio excelente. Felicitaciones por la informacion