Prayer

 

I do not cross river beds

under the burning sun in agony

nor I walk barefoot  in rituals

over mountain stretches fasting

as others do on all occasions:

but I am no atheist or agnostic.

I come when self doubt cripples me

I climb your steps to find myself.

I go to your majestic abode

not to confess  my sins or wrongs

not in fear or in supplication

I do not  know what to ask for

but I come with love to play

with the others who chant  repeating

what the priest mutters by habit.

I have no desire to see you

I know you are not in the image

punish me if I transgress

your rituals laws and grace:

I come to see my lost soul

In your ever smiling face.

When others close their eyes and pray

my eyes search for the hands

that carved you to bless

the men and women who seek solace.

Every breath I inhale, I  take in

your breath incense like to sweeten

my mind, body and life

to  purify my being to receive

your essence in all my limbs.

But are  you there in this stone

this marble floor, song and flower

in this temple built by a king

or a greedy corporate for fame;

tell me are you there in this structure

on this bejewelled throne:

if you are, let me know my destiny

my identity and role here

in this crowd of stony hearts.

Sabita Sahu

The Enlightened One

                                                                                                                                         Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

                                                                

Arnold J. Toynbee in one of his American speeches had asserted that two men were born in the world who had a perfect understanding of life and the human condition and both were born in India: Gautama the Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi. When Gautama came to the Indian world the Hindu poetry , philosophy and myths were on their declining phase because the entire idea of life was monopolized by the priests, saints and Ashramites who had spread over the country preaching appeasement  of gods, sacrifice –Yajnas- and rituals of  penance to overcome mortal suffering and attain something called salvation. The Vedic idea of a formless life principle, the Brahman was materially exploited by images and icons of imaginary proportions. Life was almost a retribution for past deeds. Gautama too saw the same situation of high - low birth, power equations and penance rituals. He saw man’s suffering-old age, sickness and death. As he was kept by his father in almost a pleasure garden of plenty, prosperity, youth, pleasure and bravery as well as a wantlesss atmosphere, the contrastive picture of human sickness, age and death definitely struck him as the ugliest truth of unaccomodated man. He left the life of youth luxury and royal indulgence to seek answers to the perennial suffering of man.

But why did he go into the forest to seek answers? A modern renouncer has no forest to escape in to search for the alternative truths to relieve the present day suffering of religious strife,  clash of civilizations, terrorism and the fears of cyber warfare. May be Gautama thought nature holds the secrets of life. Meditation on life in the midst of nature may lead to some light to dispel the darker truths of living. The hapless dwellers in the pathless woods may give him some clues; the green senate of trees, the wild beasts and seasonal changes in the environment may vest in him new powers to see through opaque realities of life. Sitting under the Bo tree he could realize that suffering is life. No knowledge can help man to transcend suffering; it has to be endured in different forms from time to time; the master sculptor, Time, moulds man. But he could know the cause of suffering: it is desire. The desire for self fulfilment. Desire for pleasure, power and glory. The inner turbulence of body and mind is caused only by man’s desire for the projected needs of the self. To conquer this self- consuming desire he found the eightfold path, which basically means non attachment. By keeping oneself in a controlled state one can ward off all attachments to pleasure, power and glory.

Gautama became the Buddha. He saw life as individually self conscious in a godless world. There is no Redeemer, no Saviour. Man must redeem himself by forsaking the self for the life of a soul. The soul virtues are non-attachment, compassion and individual orientation to his reality. Life is not general, it is individual. Each individual must live a life of austere selflessness with compassion for suffering in others. This was definitely a very modern view of life and its novelty positively attracted people to embrace Buddhism.

But when he started preaching, teaching and practising his enlightened awareness of life and reality what did he achieve? Was it not another level of  unreality where men and women sit tonsured, presenting their ugly face to each other, just to attain the truth of pain and to deny the evanescent pleasure of life- sex, wine , victory in war, riches and their ilk? If one is awake to suffering, the internalization of that suffering is no transcendence. Awakened souls must create a new order of life. A flower must expose its beauty but if there is no one to appreciate beauty why should the flower bloom? Rivers mountains and the variety of nature teach values of love and beauty. If compassion is the only projection of the soul and abstinence is tranquillity how is man different from the inanimate things with which the world is superfluous?

Love is the greatest value in life. Love only manifests itself in compassion, tranquillity. Love too is a non-attached soul value. A man and a woman can come together by love; love makes life divine. If there is no divinity in anything, if heroism, chivalry, conquest pardon and art music, philosophy and literature do not reveal man’s love of life why should the species survive at all. Even if man is the most insignificant he can make life existentially meaningful by making his self a soul by love:  love for all values, valour, honour, renunciation and compassion. Life is not withdrawal from reality; it is a value addition to creation despite suffering.

Know Then Thyself...

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

‘Who am I’ is a question that often bothers everyone be he a sophisticated intellectual, a world renouncer or a cog in the wheel proletariat slogan raiser. My love one morning in a blue mood muttered ‘I am searching for myself,’ to my consternation as it was a spontaneous whisper without any apparent reason. My bemused comment was ‘you are yourself’ as I am myself, Hamlet was himself and the fly zooming past my nose is itself. But the self seldom yields to dispassionate analysis and only a few, a countable few analyse themselves for self knowledge.

But what is the self knowledge? No knowledge can exist in a cultural, philosophical or socio- political void. In this world of relative sensibilities my ‘I’ is defined in terms of other ‘I’s and ideas and thoughts. I am defined by my parents, friends, colleagues, bosses and even neighbours however much I disagree with them. My love defines me as I define her and identify her in a context –whatever be the idealized contour of the context. The legitimation of the context is not easy. Human beings talking about universal truth merely follow deductive logic which could be challenged: for the general truth is hard to perceive. The general context too is mostly conjectural. Man in the beginning defined himself in terms of God’s decree- which he himself imagined. Man created sin-merit, good-bad and moral principles as he was compelled by the human condition to create a creator. The creator’s universe was structured by divine morality. He thought the phenomenal world was His creation. His identity is determined by the structured world in which his entire existence is guided and perhaps even regulated. But the world of 21^st century is man-made.

Knowledge changes in each generation. Opportunities made available by new knowledge give rise to new needs. New demands are made on life which is mostly a biological event. Parents cannot now say, follow our values, you will prosper. The idea of prosperity and self-fulfilment keeps on changing. Food clothes and shelter problems have been almost solved hence we ask for more calories, more protein content, better houses and fashionable clothes. These too change, vary from country to country, person to person and from mood to mood. We now fight the menace of pollution, imbalance of ecosystem which are our own making. We don’t bother about truth, salvation. Being or life after death: these are issues for idle researchers whose needs of mundanity are supplied or earned. Search for meaning, purpose, identity are now passe, we search the Net for the new excitement. When problems beset us we prefer the psychiatrist to the temple. Today’s Arjuna has no Krishna to solve his existential querry. If he chooses to shun the Gandiva and war he can go for agriculture. If he is so upset by moral dilemma he can go join some Ashram or simply be a Social Security card holder and live under the State’s mercy, his Cycle of Life.

Toady religions don’t give identity except a political bargaining ploy to fight for some relevance. The cycle of repetitive lives is now a straight line where cosmicity is reduced to a few years of birth, growth middle age and finally a death. The average human does not expect his children to raise memorials for him. The memorials which the state raises for some great sons of the soil are mere tourist spots for the future generations. That future too is only a few hundred years and the fate of the Bamiyan Buddha awaits them all in the changing process of ideologies. Meaning changes adding new scenes to the Cosmic Drama.

Man today has rights- human rights to carve out his /her own identity as he pleases, the Sabrimala Deity has his own rights. He does not wish to see menstruating women to pay obeisance to him. He has his rights. Meera would have asked ‘are  you Purushottama?’ And the modern activists Meeras now ask: why not take our bhakti, we are well padded, no sign or smell of our feminine essence will pollute your celibacy. Man today has choice. He creates chances, takes risks to create his identity. Those who believe in the heroism of a rapist demonstrate their sexual prowess by forcing a woman on the roadside. The world has changed, identities too change moment by moment. He wears several hats. His identity too has shades, forms, shapes, and fragrance which are not constant or permanent.

Know then thyself my love, presume not to scan God or godlessness be yourself. If you wish to be a housewife be a good one: a loveable socialite – be one: A true believer in love and creativity, orient your being towards that and be a proud Cleopatra braving planets and throwing plates at the laity. If you feel like sulking, quarrelling, breaking utensils do: for whatever you do you are yourself. As the sky changes colours, earth changes forms, man changes in time; governments change, societies change; you change yourself as the moods takes you on. But be yourself for whatever you do is a facet of your identity: Love it. We can never know what life is all about but we can live the composite whole of our identity.

LIFE A to Z

Absolute truth is a myth,

Beauty Love and God enter the human heart,

Creating new temples for personal deities,

Devotion is your own; private sacred beautiful,

Each moment is an abstraction

Frustrating by duality

        negatives catching up with absolute of the soul.

God is not to blame or praise for our expectation,

Higher you aspire greater is the pull of gravitas.

'I' alone matters, in the pull push of contrarian  virtues.

Just to choose is unjust can be evaded zestfully.

Kill or kiss are not the limit.

Looking for happiness we invite

Mindless pain never to aspire again.

Nothing is constant is a constant truth,

Open the gate let everything enter

            the living, non living, the inert.

Pause, think before you choose

           for yourself and for mankind,

Questions will be asked why, what for, never bother,

Reversals will happen,

           rivers will be frozen in the ocean of ignorance

Showers of blood may drench you mad

Tears will swell your eyes

Utter futility will break your purpose,

Veer not from your course

Waver not, Hold on! To your faith

X mas be your everyday

      as your personal birthday.

Yes ,you are a man

      deviate you nothing can,

Zing on show to the world

       you have created a new myth.

Sabita Sahu

Lifeline

When my heart knocks at the ribs

I never shudder or blink, I breathe deep

switch off my mind and change channels.

When the wind speed rises 

I blow the wind into space

to make breathing easy with the

blowing kiss of  my faraway love.

Road blocks, traffic jams, 

mountain terrains can never

make me deviate, my love makes

my pathline to his inviting soul.

Life drowns death in work and pain

death challenges life to try  again

to rain like the clouds on dry rivers

I jump all ravines to reach my fate.

When the sun disappears from the sky

the moon melts in the lava of the dark

I wait for my bud

to bloom  next spring.

Sabita Sahu

Crossing limits

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

The other night I shouted at my soulmate: You are crossing limits. Naturally she roared back: Yes, now I know my limits. I know now where you hold me; my place in your heart and in the protestation of your love!After she shut me up with a stern ‘goodnight’ I sank into a deep brown study. What has happened? What limit, I was sore about, did she cross, when she almost exploded saying reality is not an abstraction! Both reality and abstraction are without borders, boundaries; nothing is off limits in love. If love is not limited by space and time, language and culture, sense and mind, what limit did she transcend or transgress? I was nonplussed, my logic failed me to build an argument in my favour. Borders are off limits for trespassers. Laws and regulations set limits for people. Social time regulations can be understood. Auspicious moments have time limitations. Choice too operates within a framework- one cannot choose to kill another for revenge although revenge is an accepted heroic value.

Limits are always set by administration for smooth conduct of events, movements, communication and all social operation. Order, balance, harmony are maintained only when limits are honoured. Limits always presuppose a world without mystery. Logic of human perceptions is codified and simplified for smooth human process in living in the world. All limits are fixed, at times even arbitrarily, to make the world a home for man. If limits are not imposed morality will collapse and society will plunge into primeval chaos. Perhaps for this fear a Maker- Administrator of the world was invented by our ancestors called God.  All laws, limits, limitations were imaginatively made in the name of God. All freedom and all limits flew from god’s decree for keeping the world of creation orderly. Compassion, mercy, kindness, pardon, renunciation and such like values were presumed to be divine values to keep human anger, hate and violence in check. Theft of what belongs to others was/ is off limits. Murder, even self slaughter, was forbidden. All these rules and laws stemmed from a moral centre called God.

If that is true, how is it that all religions believing in the same God hate each other? Christianity and Islam, Semites and Islam, not to speak of Hindus and Muslims are always hateful of each other in spite of constitutional polities all over the world? If God is the ultimate limit of man and nature, how can the practioners of the same God’s moral laws fight between themselves? How could monotheism followed by Islam fail to recognize the gods of polytheistic Hindus? How could Christ, the Son of God be crucified...? Questions like these are not off limits to human consciousness.

This leads us to human freedom which is not necessarily a political truth. Freedom is of the spirit and it always transgresses all limits- political, ethical, social even natural. Freedom as I have said elsewhere is a defiant spirit. It does not recognise any limit anywhere. Man tries to embrace everything- nature society and the preternatural. The limits of nature have already been transgressed. Air, water, earth, sky and ether are all under attack by man’s limitless freedom. We destroy mountains, change the course of rivers, and reach Moon, Mars and now the Sun. Knowledge and our quest for knowledge has no limits. We quest for the destruction of the race too. Sapiens were never in greater danger of total annihilation than the21st century. The cyber war is about to begin. Banks are hacked; military establishments may be the next target for men who do not care for limits. The IBMs are no more a threat. A click somewhere will make all human achievements meaningless.

To return to my beginning, what limits did my love cross? Did I set any limits on love and its honey territory in my love for the only person out of the 700 billion humans? Love has no limits of body, mind, spirit or the Beyond. Any limit set by me is arbitrary and out of sync with God’s vast imagination.  Whatever limits are imposed by man for order, love sets its own limits which are limitless. Love is greater vaster and more life friendly than God. If man operates in love all borders, boundaries, rules, laws will be irrelevant. Love is the law of life and our total reality.

Hate

Mountains and valleys have no lines

to divide or claim ownership;

men draw and call them borders.

They fight for boundaries and

limits making loveliness bloody.

Maps divide the earth into countries,

kingdoms divide humans to draw

casteline and spill blood on whims.

Swords and guns,  hate and abuse

enter  our vocabulary,

love like the faded lily

falls at noon.

We killed Christ and Gandhi,

and will kill those who speak
the language of love,
let’s not make hate our identity,
now it’s time to change our DNA

else consumed shall we be

in the pyre of our own hate.

Sabita Sahu

Wait and Hope

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Wise men counsel all despondents: wait and hope. This was the wisdom of sages and saints who saw primitive reality of flaccid resolves of people in the face of despairing events. Hunger sickness, tyranny and unpredictability of disastrous moments were meant to be tolerated with unwilled fortitude. Suffering was built into the human condition. Man was totally powerless against the elements, the turbulence of nature as well as the sword of authority. Unrecognized men, leaderless and weak could not even protest. They had only one stance: the stance of a supplicant. Mercy, kindness, pardon and such like values which assumed a superior ‘giver’or dispenser, were wisdom for the saints who had renounced social life- not sexual life- to attain this wisdom by meditation, prayer and worship. In their moments of illumination they praised renunciation as a great virtue for those who had things to give and give up: power and pelf. For the rest, that is those who failed to make both ends meet the wise advice was to “stand and wait”, the Miltonic way of serving god; or to wait for the things to happen and hope for better days: For milk and honey to rain from high above and for idyllic scenes to transform present sordidness by some divine wielder of wand.

Wait and hope experienced a change of meaning about the Industrial Revolution. By 17^th century almost all over the world man had the realization that Manna does not fall from heaven; man must work to earn his keep. Life is work and work is worship; the human time available could be wasted by waiting for things to happen - which is nonhuman. The French Revolution of 1789 also proved that waiting for any change in a despotic dispensation is foolishness. Man must catch the bull by the horn instead of waiting for the saviour to be moved by compassion with prayer. Those who waited for the marauder to stop and turn back by prayer- induced awakening of conscience simply lost their freedom and survival. The invaders never subscribed to the wisdom of wait and hope: they exploited this passive wisdom of pathological surrender to other directed wisdom.

One can wait for his love to return after 25 years mean- time hoping and praying for the paved road with green foliage growing all around for the dainty feet of his lady love to come with lithe steps. And such lovers suffer every moment with dual pain- the pain of waiting and the interminable seconds bringing emptiness and the slow emaciation of the spirit. For a modern man waiting and hoping mean idling away time doing nothing and daydreaming and fantasizing which have no logic or concrete floor to build castles on. Modern man thinks those who cannot force the moments to its critical pitch only wait and finally die as the knight in Browning’s “The Statue”. Waiting is wasting time’s allotted span to an individual by watching the hair turn grey and seasons roll by in repetitive futility.

What is hope? Hope springs eternal in the human breast- hope for what? Fulfilment of the human potential or Redemption, the unrealizable, impalpable something no mortal has remained to report? Today we wait for telephone calls; there too the passing seconds are eternities of nonexistence. We wait for appointment letters, election dates and results, the email or the plane to land or take off. Waiting for a bus or a train too is a toll on patience. At times we wait for the end of a boring film. Some people wait for the end of an infructuous life. Others wait for a war to start or a match to begin. But waiting is the most boring thing whatever the expectations. But people wait for the Helle   Bop and the Redeemer's ship to carry us to the promised land. Their cases are different as these waiters never live in this world. They are aliens in this planet. Those who hope for the things are not active players. They cannot make things happen they will simply dream of things otherworldly.

 In today’s world nothing waits for nothing. The Sun does not wait for the cyclone to cease, it rises however unseen it may be. Modern man knows there is no free lunch. There is no Alladin’s lamp to grant our wishes. No Santa Claus descends with his hoary charm to give us our hoped for things. Man today commands the robots; AI (artificial Intelligence) and biometric algorithms end our wait. Google and Alpha Zero can play games for us and make us win prizes. Machines can digitally reduce our woes and our waiting blues.

Those who wait and hope are perhaps immortals up above. They wait for man to be more responsible for fellow men and hope man to love, work and create as he believes in the pleasure of the divine.