one

indivisible,
though as if
divided in beings (Gita)

*****

voices

in the resounding emptiness of my skull,
i hear voices,
like marbles
dropped into a copper vessel.

*****

being aware of your breath

i have been monitoring the different levels of meditation possible for me to explore and, joyously, something new came up this morning, from insight received from a book i am reading.

it is about being aware of the breath. when one inhales a deep breath, one is aware of taking a deep breath... when one exhales a deep breath, one is again aware of exhaling a deep breath.

then we conceive breathing as a phenomenon of the body; we keep on conceiving breathing as a phenomenon of the body. we find our entire body breathing...

then we conceive breathing as a phenomenon of the mind; we keep on conceiving breathing as a phenomenon of the mind. we find our entire mind breathing...

then we conceive breathing as a phenomenon of our sensuality; we keep on conceiving breathing as a phenomenon of our sensuality. we find ourselves breathing with all five senses of our being...

breathing is a phenomenon that takes place "here and now," the awareness of which fixes us totally to the place and the moment.

the here-now feeling...
with the breathing conceived and realised as a phenomenon of the body, mind and sensuality...
and with the awareness that breathing is the truth of what is here and now,
we breathe on and touch another level of meditation.

*****

caption

the next turn...
they come and go; they come and go:
a compound wall in thiruvananthapuram being erased of the memories of last year's panchayat elections to receive the dreams of the latest of the dreams of the years to come.
april 13 is the date of the Assembly elections in kerala.

(this is a caption for a picture my friend ratheesh took for our paper today. i thought of putting it here since i like the ring of the thing.)

spell

i was listening to the Buddha speaking
about the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch
and about thought that can bring to reality all these senses from the void,
thereby tethering us to the self,
and about the freedom that is there to be gained
by cutting the chain that anchors us down,
the chain that is the total of thought and the five senses,
the cutting of which is death,
and i was sitting thus on the steps of my house
meditating
when he opened the gate and came in and stood before me
hot from the sun,
picking the post addressed to me from the bunch of letters in his left hand,
and a bird from the tree overhead shot its droppings
and the droppings fell splashing down his cheek to his shirt front
and i felt the whole of his discomfort,
a distress at the bird that had flown away
and the warmth of the droppings on his cheek
and together we went to the tap to the right of the house
and i helped him wash his face
and brush his shirt front clean sprinkling water
and we stood smiling at each other
full of love for the bird and everything
and then i looked at the letter he had handed over to me...
and the spell
broke.

*****

love and hate

i was wondering whether a total transformation is possible.
each one of us has an outward looking eye
that perceives so many other entities all around
that have to be named and graded
according to the best of our individual convenience,
comfort, sentiment, ideology...
everything boils down to the 'me.'
i am the person who is central to everything
when i say i love this and that,
or when i say i hate.

*****

new year

happy new your to all my friends!!!
i am engaged in a fight where total focus of mind is necessary.
so i am keeping out the blog from my attention.
hope to write about this experience soon, and also visit other blogs to see what my friends are doing.
the ongoing experience is not the new. Arjuna might have experienced it aiming his arrow at the eye.
i am watching what is possible if you turn weightless,
nothing distracting you,
no gravitational pull excercising its influence on you,
no fear touching any corner of your heart,
nothing mattering,
you turn just into a flame burning smokeless.

*****