" Acceptance does not lie in doing nothing. Acceptance is doing what comes naturally. To a bud, its gentle opening; to us, our voicing of our being. I open silently like a bud and I roar violently like a Storm -- both states are natural to me. And I accept and enjoy and celebrate both."- H. B.
BEAM ONE
Light and revelation, discovery of lands new and revisited, flashes of inspiration in the moments which defy Time, wire in the blood- all defy the serenity of what is. An all pervasive dark soothes the homogeneous Spirit. Gentle fragrance of the half open bud does not even whisper a claim to beauty, much less clamour it. It does not seek attention or admiration. It just is- an un-embellished affirmation of existence unconscious of its own beauty or attraction. This, I believe is the natural state of beings- at one with the whole, more in acceptance than in curiosity. Is it our upstart ego which craves revelations and blinding flashes of light, questions and seeks answers, asserts itself and, in the act of assertion, becomes the bubble which seeks to understand the ocean it rose from? Bright light violates the soothing pall. There is music to be felt when you close your eyes and merge the dark on either side of this body, which is but a thin layer of the darkness itself.
Rajiv Mudgil, London
25 Jan, 2010
BEAM TWO
Gentle fragrance of the half open bud". That's what our thoughts, our curiosity, our desire to clamour and our pursuit of something are. We do not exhale fragrance. We exhale our being - in a way, the bud also does the same by allowing itself to open , howsoever gently -- and our urge to give voice to whatever goes on within us is the form our exhaling takes . Therefore, I celebrate ( not that you and I have any choice) the clamour of my being as much as I celebrate " the Gentle fragrance of the half open bud." Fragrance and clamour are states of being, and neither is better than the other, nor can be. Acceptance does not lie in doing nothing. Acceptance is doing what comes naturally. To a bud, its gentle opening; to us, our voicing of our being. I open silently like a bud and I roar violently like a storm -- both states are natural to me. And I accept and enjoy and celebrate both.
HARCHARAN BAINS
JANUARY 26, 2010
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4 comments:
Acceptance is sometimes in letting go. Acceptance is in holding your ground not with a roar but with a smirk at the world. Acceptance is also in being stubborn but not to cling on...
Acceptance is to be the bud and let that sun chase you rather you deflect towards its gravity.
Lovely words from you guys... Haven't read such English in a while:)
Somehow reminded me of that story which is the beginning parable of Richard Bach's Illusions.
"Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. ... "
Acceptance is not in gesture of letting go. Acceptance is also in dare to let go and risk the flow of current.
MY GOD! HARCHARAN, YOUR BUD AND ROAR THING IS SO GREAT IT REMINDED OF WALT WHITMAN
'DO I CONTRADICT MYSELF
VERY WELL THEN I DO
MISSING ME ONE PLACE
SEARCH ANOTHER'
I am very happy that u have left ur
teachers,undersined included,far behind in understanding and unfolding meanings of life and living in ur own wonderful way.My use of capital letters in the beginning is my acknowledgement of and tribute to your superior being.
Acceptance is ripeness and i quote Shakespeare:
'Men must endure their going hence
Even as their coming hither
Ripeness is all'
Kaushal Sir, this is unfair and makes me feel small. No student must ever be made to hear this, although every student in his early arrogance does like to hear precisely this. Long years repalce arrogance with acknowledgement of one's humble truth. And the torrent that you call a roar , you would recall, is nothing but the legacy of those years of estiny whn I was your student, when you first picked me out to pat me on my back. That day has never gone from my mind, and I ahve spent the rest of my life trying to build upon the love that a stranger of a teacher had showered on me on the very first day of my meeting him. Not everyone is as lucky as I was in having a teacher who insisted with me that I was good. ( And you are stil doing the same thing with me; neither have you given up being my teacher nor have I being your disciple. Take me in again, and teach me like you first did. Breaking rules and loving turbulence is what you had sowed in me; you can perhaps say that I have not allowed the plant to wither.(Or at least I have tried to keep it green and flourishing) But how could I do otherwise! A superior gardner had shaped my years of learning. I am right what I was when you first told what I should be. - Harcharan
I speak from the vantage point of a couple of large scotches on the rocks and apologise for nothing that ensues.
I just finished watching David Dimbleby’s ‘Seven Ages of Britain’. Being an Anglophile, I could only marvel at and admire the brilliance of David’s mind and admire his congeniality and lack of airs. This is one of the many admirations that one need not apologise for.
I read your blog and sometimes it provokes me out of my indolence which, I reckon, is a condition of acceptance and surrender- without an emotion attached to either. But you incite me only to a perpetual intellectual masturbation without the prospect of a climatic orgasm. Harcharan, what in us seeks salvation, if that is what we indeed seek.? Move beyond the treachery of words. This is not a contest of wills or that whore who parades herself as intellect. It is the hunger of the soul, way beyond the etiquette of rectitude, way beyond the purist ignominy of joie de vivre. Where does our peripatetic mind lead? Do we seek and kneel in the temple of Love? But then what is love but an evocation of Beauty? Beauty indeed has to be the absolute truth.
Is it?
Beauty owes its existence to its unattainabilty. How can such a feeble thing as familiarity kill divine Beauty? Can you imagine the wonder, the awe, the unspeakable, overwhelming sight of a sunset to eyes that have never beheld it before? My God, it would blow your spirit away. Do you know how we see it through the car windscreen? “Look at the colours in the sky.” “Yeah. Where shall we have dinner?” It’s Prufrock measuring our lives every day of our lives. Harcharan, I have known the tremors of love. I have been where my whole being was but a trembling leaf to a single moment of eye contact with the women I loved. I have known the pain of abstinence where to touch the woman I loved was to defile her purity and beauty. Where I withdrew my hand even though the women I loved craved for it. I could not defile them.
‘Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!’
Can you imagine being married to a woman that you loved with everything inside your chest? Can you imagine where three months of sex with her bring you to? Your nerve ends would have withered as you turned your back and felt irritated by her need to cling on. Is there a more gruesome murder of something so divine? That such an insignificant thing as familiarity should have the power to demolish the divinity of celestial beauty is our curse.
Therefore, Harcharan, the womb of death which contains the primordial seed of eternal life. Not the chicanery of words, not the perfidy of the strumpet intellect but the peace of the sanctum sanctorum which launches the storms and captures them as they return spent. Activity is not turbulence. In space there is no movement except the imperceptible movement of rotating universes. The rotation is not efferent, it is concentric moving to the still centre of the singular point which contains the ever expanding universes.
‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone’
The truth is absolute in its transience. One does not disprove another. We just acknowledge and surrender to the truths as they manifest themselves. Acceptance is acknowledgement- no more no less. Nothing more or less is required because the acceptance of a contrary truth in another moment does neither violate nor disprove the one which preceded it. EASE is a mundane but de profundis state of a mind which has known the pain of beauty one cannot blemish by laying a finger, but can let you gaze at its alluring face forever and feel the claws gripping your heart which a lifetime of familiarity cannot wane.
Pray that I never approach a keyboard after a couple of scotches- for your sake and mine.
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