Buddha In Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed and growing sweet --
all this universe, to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you:
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

Rainer Maria Rilke
1875-1926
(trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

For You, Dad, the gift of my wandering Soul

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have far to go out into the world

toward that same church, which he forgot.

Ranier Marie Rilke

(transl. Robert Bly)

The White TIger on Caste

"I should explain a thing or two about caste. Even Indians get confused about this world, especially educated Indians in the cities. They'll make a mess of explaining it to you. But it's simple, really.

Let me start with me.

See: Halwai, my name means 'sweet-maker'.

That's my caste, my destiny. Everyone in the Darkness who knows that name knows all about me at once. That's why Kishan and I kept getting jobs at sweet shops wherever we went. The owner thought, Ah, they're Halwais, making sweets and tea is in their blood.

But if we were Halwais, then why was my father not making sweets but pulling a rickshaw? Why did I grow up breaking coals and wiping tables, instead of eating gulab jamuns and sweet pastries when and where I chose to. Why was I lean and dark and cunning, and not fat and creamy-skinned and smiling, like a boy raised on sweets would be?

See, this country, in its days of greatness, when it was the richest nation on earth, was like a zoo. A clean, well-kept orderly zoo. Everyone in his place, everyone happy. Goldsmiths here. Cowherds here. Landlords there. The man called Halwai made sweets. The man called cowherd tended cows. The untouchable cleaned faeces. Landlords were kind to their serfs. Women covered their heads with a veil and turned their eyes to the ground when talking to strange men.

And then, thanks to all those politicians in Delhi, on the fifteenth of August 1947 -- the day the British left -- the cages had been let open; the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart and jungle law replaced zoo law. Those that were the most vicious, the hungriest, had eaten everyone else up, and grown big bellies. That was all that counted now, the size of your belly. It didn't matter whether you were a woman, a Muslim, an untouchable: anyone with a belly could rise up.

My father's father must have been a real Halwai, a sweet-maker, but when he inherited the shop, a member of some other caste must have stolen it from him with the help of the police. My father had not had the belly to fight back. That's why he had fallen all the way to the mud, to the level of the rickshaw puller. That's why I was cheated of my destiny to be fat, and creamy-skinned, and smiling.

To sum up -- in the olden days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies.

And only two destinies: eat -- or get eaten up."

The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga

Man Booker Prize winner 2008

The Secret Scripture

It is funny, bu it strikes me that a person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling after and a question mark.

My father's happiness not only redeemed him, but drove him to stories, and keeps him even now alive in me, like a second more patient and more pleasing soul with my poor soul.

Perhaps his happiness was curiously unfounded. But cannot a man make himself as happy as he can in the strange long reaches of a life? I think it is legitimate. After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.

The Secret Scripture
Sebastian Barry

The Hand Held Before Thine Eyes

Just as the hand, held before the eye, can hide the tallest mountain, so the routine of everyday life can keep us from seeing the vast radiance and secret wonders that fill the world.

Ba'al Shem Tov (Besht)
'Master of the Divine Name'
Jewish mystical rabbi
1689-1760

Abenezra, in the starry field above...

I see You in the starry field;
I see You in the harvest's yield;
In every breath, in every sound,
An echo of Your name is found.
The blade of grass, the simple flower,
Bear witness to Your matchless power.
In wonder-workings or some bush aflame,
We look for God and fancy You concealed;
But in earth's common things You stand revealed,
While grass and flowers and stars spell out Your name.


Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra (Abenezra)
poet, pilgrim soul and philosopher of religion
b. Tudela, Islamic Spain; d. unknown
1092-1167

A Swinger of Birches

Birches (segment)

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

by Robert Frost