Many of us have issues with our past. We try and come to terms with it and yet fail to understand how.

Have you ever noticed that the mind can understand the present only if it does not compare, and judge? The desire to alter or condemn the present without understanding it gives continuance to the past. Only in comprehending the reflection of the past in the mirror of the present, without distortion, is there renewal.

If we have lived an experience fully, completely, we find  that it leaves no traces behind. It is only the incomplete experiences that leave their mark, giving continuity to self-identified memory. We consider the present as a means to an end, so the present loses its immense significance. The present is the eternal, and that is what we must realise.

As each experience arises i guess we need to live it out as fully and deeply as possible; think it out, feel it out extensively and profoundly; be aware of its pain and pleasure, of our judgments and identifications. Only when experience is completed is there a renewal. We must be capable of living the four seasons in a day; to be keenly aware, to experience, to understand and be free of the gatherings of each day. 

And if only it were so easy............

I was not aware of the dark chambers,
The blind walls, the unlit recesses of my mind.

How i rejoiced, as if
Among the glittering stars
I had discovered the milky way, or a full moon even...
Till the mild sun appears
Promising possibilities,
puts to an acid test
my ability to gaze at the dazzling display
Of the wholsome brightness
Or of the sheer splendour
Overpowering the senses.

I must confide, confess:
i had no visions of beatific bliss
But blessed is he who looks
at works of art,
In colour, words or sheer sound,
In the sudden spread of snows
On rugged peaks rising into high space.

How they instrust us
Help us discover windows
in grim walls
Shining spaces in dark chambers.
A fresh snowfall
A work of fiction
An encounter all enter the ego's domain
Define anew the routes
For thoughts and responses.

There can be no exemption
from the icy chill of winter,
The dull ambivalance
To a gusty passion,
The absence of relevance
to the truth you felt as sorely as a toothache.

You may have to eat your appetite
And drink many a desire,
Yet you will not deny
The gain.
After each encounter,
You cannot but sit down
and redraft the bargain
With your benign self.

Nothing, but nothing
is forever.

Days and nights
fall like dice
on the board.
Months and years,
slip thru one's fingers
like sand.
All is but a play
of light and shade.
Nothing but nothing
is permanent.

I am, the only one.
Permanent.
Who keeps changing,
every moment.
 

Most of us are never alone. You may withdraw into the mountains and live as a recluse, but when you are physically by yourself, you will have with you all your ideas, your experiences, your traditions, your knowledge of what has been. The monk in a monastery cell is not alone; he is with his conceptual God, with his theology, with the beliefs and dogmas of his particular conditioning. Similarly, one who withdraws from the world and lives in isolation is not alone, for he too lives with his memories. I am talking of an aloneness in which the mind is totally free from the past, and only such a mind is virtuous, for only in this aloneness is there innocence.

Perhaps many of you will say, "That is too much to ask. One cannot live like that in this chaotic world, where one has to go to the office every day, earn a livelihood, bear children, endure the nagging of one's wife or husband, and all the rest of it." But I think it is directly related to everyday life and action; otherwise, it has no value at all. When one is alone amidst all the movenemt of daily life, there comes a virtue which is virile and which brings an extraordinary sense of purity and gentleness. It doesn't matter if one makes mistakes; that is of very little importance. What matters is to have this feeling of being completely alone, uncontaminated, for it is only then that can know or be aware of that which is beyond the word, beyond the name, beyond all the projections of imagination.

Drawing

Do not erase these lines,
let them be.
My child
has drawn them,
with his little pink hands.
Curved and curly.

So what if the lines
do not make a form?

In these lines,
I see my child's hands.
In these very lines,
I see myself